Surviving Peace
by Heat in Freezing
Summary: After the war ends, Eren and Armin succumb to the Curse of Ymir. Mikasa struggles to find her way in a peaceful world, loneliness and a broken heart her only companions. But when she crosses paths with the former Captain Levi, Mikasa feels something other than numb for the first time in years. Desperate, she resolves to live again instead of simply surviving.
1. Chapter 1

Hey guys, this is die-forellex over on tumblr. I decided to cross post this fic here on. (Please don't review saying I stole it lol.) While this story is completed, I would love for feedback/comments, it helps me stay motivated to keep working on my current works (that should also be posted over here!) Enjoy!

* * *

Mikasa adjusts her scarf around her neck. This one is blue and silk, not the familiar wooly red one she used to wear constantly.

"Wasn't the play wonderful? I've never seen anything like that!"

Jean walks a few paces ahead of her, his feet slapping on the wet pavement on the way back to the inn she's taken up residence in.

"Yeah, it was great," she says, trying her best to sound cheerful. Despite the fact that she hasn't felt cheerful in a long time, she's pretty decent at this deception.

Jean, like everyone else, accepts her words for truth and smiles brightly.

She has wondered multiple times this evening if going out to a dinner and play with Jean was a bad idea, but she's too lonely to refuse. With Eren and Armin dead, it takes every ounce of her strength to get out of bed each day. She exists purely on stubbornness, grief, and spite. It keeps her functioning, but she doesn't remember the last time she felt anything genuine.

A beaded dress, silk scarf and a "not-a-date-date with Jean Kirstein hasn't filled anything inside of her. If anything it's done the opposite, his happy glances and demeanor simply echoing around in her emptiness. His presence exhausts her, and all she wants to do is go to sleep.

So thankfully they're close to the place she's been for the last couple months, an Inn on the outskirts of the city over a small but boisterous tavern. The bedding is comfortable, the landlady is kind and she pays on a weekly basis for the next week. This way, it's not permanent. She doesn't have to set down roots here, doesn't have to form an attachment to anyone or anything, she could be gone to who knows where anytime she decided.

She probably won't go anywhere, she has nowhere. It's wrong of her to bring her misery upon someone else, like Connie and Sasha who've just had a baby. Even Jean is the normal kind of lonely; the kind that a pretty wife and a garden can probably fix.

 _Eren taught me to live again, and now all I can do is live so I remember him._

What's worse is that Armin, the only person who understood, who loved him as much as she did, is gone too.

As nice as Jean is trying to be (he's talking right now, but she isn't listening) she just wants to go up into her room, snuggle her scarf and go to sleep, maybe after a drink or four.

"Would that be nice, Mikasa?"

"Uh, yeah sure."

In a show of chivalry, Jean holds the door to the Inn for her to walk inside.

Mikasa gathers that she had agreed to get a drink with him, which is the very last thing she wants. She wants to be alone and sleep until eleven, but for whatever reason she doesn't have it in her to be rude to someone who's consistently tried to make her happy for the last five hours.

She slept with him about a month ago and immediately regretted it. Still, she hadn't been able to stop herself from repeating the mistake over the course of the following month. Eventually she came to her senses and told him that they should just continue being friends. He had agreed even though she knew that it wasn't what he'd wanted. She knows that she has no business taking advantage of his company or kindness, and fucking him had just reminded her of how empty and alone she felt.

But he's someone familiar, and she doesn't have many familiar faces anymore so, in her selfishness, she still does something with him once a week, as "just friends."

She orders them both steins of ale and she sits herself in a worn red armchair, taking off her wet shoes and curling her feet under herself, looking off into space.

The tavern is busy with plenty of laughing people – it's a Friday and it's 10 in the evening, so most people's nights are just getting started. Mikasa feels out of place, but that's not unusual.

"Do you wanna get out of the city sometime? I've been wanting to go to the countryside and visit this orchard."

Mikasa glances at Jean, his face genuine and kind despite her cold demeanor, and she holds back a sign.

"I don't know if that's really my thing."

His smile falters and he glances downward.

"Oh, well that's okay, what about–"

"Mikasa? Jean?"

Mikasa has to stop herself from standing and thumping on her chest as the former Commander Hanji walks into the increasingly busy tavern.

Jean clearly feels similarly as he's actually stood up, clearly out of habit.

"It's great to see you two, I had to be sure it was you guys because well, I don't see so well anymore," she gestures comically at her eye patch.

Mikasa then notices that Hanji isn't alone.

For whatever reason Mikasa feels her heart skip when she sees the former Captain Levi glaring from behind Hanji. He's dressed sharply in a grey suit, tailored perfectly to his small frame and shining black shoes.

They make eye contact and her initial reaction is to look away because even she finds the man intimidating, but her pride doesn't allow it so she bears his scrutiny with her usual facade of blase apathy. She can't help but feel that she's being sized up, though she supposes that she's doing the same.

"Oh and Captain–"

"I haven't been in charge of anything for a few years now," he drawls.

"Oh right," Jean laughs and rubs the back of his neck, slightly embarrassed, "force of habit I suppose."

For whatever reason, this whole encounter has Mikasa on edge. Seeing two people from the past like this is unsettling. She reaches for her clutch and pulls out a cigarette, lights it and takes a deep inhale, the slight buzzing sensation providing her with a mild relief.

She exhales slowly, watching the blue smoke circle upwards in lazy circles and flicks the ash off the end of the cigarette.

Levi stares blankly at her as he sits down across from her, next to Jean. He unbuttons his coat revealing a crisp white shirt and black suspenders.

"This place is really classy," he says distastefully.

She doesn't know why, but she can't help but smirk at his nonchalant, almost sarcastic way of speaking, a trait of his that perhaps she didn't appreciate in her youth.

Hanji speaks animatedly about her work as a scientist in the new government.

Hanji takes every opportunity she can to tease him, either referencing his small stature, his up-tight cleaning habits or both.

"What are you guys doing here anyways?" Jean asks after he finishes the ale that Hanji bought.

"I live nearby and shorty here was helping me with an experiment so he's staying here," Levi glares at the word "shorty" and slugs Hanji on the arm.

"Ah!" Hanji hisses and rubs the spot he hit.

"What kind of experiment?" Mikasa asks, extinguishing her cigarette and reaching for another distractedly.

Hanji's eyes light up with glee and Levi rolls his eyes at her excitement, taking another drink of his ale.

"Well Mikasa it's funny you ask because with today's findings I could use your help as well! You see, even though the titans are gone and the military all but disarmed, it's bothered me," Hanji adjusts her glasses, a serious, contemplative look now in her eye, "I want to know what specifically what makes descendants of the Ackerman bloodline so particularly…" Mikasa can tell she's searching for the right word, "lethal is really all I can describe it as because athletic sells the whole thing a little short, wouldn't you agree?"

Mikasa thinks back to flying through the air, the burn in her muscles as she slices through titan flesh, the way she would move without thinking but simply knowing. One after the other falling until she's killed every single one around her, watching them pile on top of each other in a heap while her comrades struggle to take a single one down in teams of five.

"Yeah, athletic doesn't suffice," she agrees darkly.

"Right. I mean don't get me wrong, there have been plenty of strong soldiers, myself not being anything too shabby, but you and Levi were something truly unprecedented. Before you came along, I thought it had to do with Levi's upbringing, orphan in the underground city etcetera," she waves her hand dismissively as if she's simply discussing the weather. "But then you came along and what a twist, you share an ancestor! So we know that it's not just coincidence, not just circumstantial, though we know circumstance matters, I'm interested in the missing biological element–"

"Hanji you're drunk, why don't you bother her later?" Levi interrupts.

"I'm not drunk I can drink way more than this!" Hanji shouts.

Mikasa untucks her feet, crosses her legs and takes the first drag of her second cigarette.

"I don't see the benefit honestly," she says coldly. "He and I are the only ones left, the titans are gone, my… skill set, is somewhat obsolete, I haven't touched maneuvering gear in years."

Hanji looks like Mikasa has just said that the sky is green or that fish walk on land.

"But isn't it curious?! Don't you want to know if there's anything specific? Today alone I found three unique markers in Levi's blood, three!" Hanji speaks as if she is reciting the most beautiful of poetry. " And another variation that, get this, I've only ever seen before in Titan blood!"

This makes Mikasa flinch and Jean sputter.

"Are you saying that Mikasa's family is somehow similar to…titans?" Jean asks.

Hanji shrugs. "It's hard to say, but it's clear there's something unique, something special." Hanji looks at Mikasa, who is trying her hardest to maintain her usual indifference but knows that it's cracking a little bit.

A strange combination of boredom and curiosity make her agree to partake in Hanji's little study.

The next morning when Mikasa shows up wearing a dress and stockings, she can't help but feel she has made a mistake.

"I guess I should've at least told you to wear pants, you're taller than me but let me see what I have that you can wear!" Hanji exclaims, fumbling with 3DMG and rifling through her bag for extra clothes.

Levi looks at her boredly; dressed in a simple grey shirt and pants he is far better equipped to handle whatever it is Hanji expects of them.

Tentatively, Mikasa examines the gear and memories come flooding back, of both terror and exhilaration.

She carefully and methodically takes everything apart, checking for malfunctions and calibrates everything to her preferred specifications.

"Gah, I'll be right back, I gotta run inside to get you some clothes of mine."

Hanji comes back and hands her a pair of green canvas pants and a white shirt, insisting that she will buy her clothes in her size for helping her out first thing this evening.

"Alright both of you if I could just take a preliminary blood sample that'd be great!"

Mikasa doesn't ask, but Hanji starts explaining anyways.

"You see, I have a theory, but I need a baseline sample for comparison," she sticks her with the needle quickly and collects a small vial of blood, "what I'm looking for is change, really." She sticks a bandage on her arm. "Sorry in advance for how many times I'm going to have to stick you."

"It's fine, what do you want me to do?"

"My theory requires that I get your heart pumping. In a perfect world I'd have ten Titans for you to kill," Mikasa thinks this an odd vision of a perfect world but remains silent, "so instead, I have this maneuvering course set up, like back in the day," Hanji sighs wistfully as if being in the Scouting Legion had been some sort of social club.

"Hard to get worked up about slashing mannequins," Levi says lowly, arms crossed and somehow looking down at Hanji imperiously despite the fact that she's quite a bit taller than him.

"Yeah, let's see how you both do and we can figure it out from there, in any case push yourself to complete the course as quickly as you can," Hanji sighs but after a beat seems to get excited, a grin on her face, "In fact, whoever is faster gets dinner on me!"

Mikasa could care less about dinner, but the idea of competition — real competition — gives her a thrill she hasn't felt in a while.

Hanji watches the former Captain with rapt attention, a clipboard and pencil in hand. When he prepares himself to start the course, Hanji readies a timer and jots down a few notes that Mikasa can't begin to guess about since he's just standing there.

"Okay, start!"

Levi aims at a post with his grappling hook and is off.

He is _still_ blindingly fast, even after all of these years. Mikasa has never simply observed him, always fighting herself or even with him, and he is truly a sight to behold. He is suited to the air in a way that seems impossible for a creature with no wings, his body twisting with the wind, blades cutting at the targets with elegant brutality.

The last target is at least ten meters away from the previous one, and lower as well. Mikasa watches as he uses the momentum from the previous strike, his blade following through completely and rotating his body flawlessly, splintering the top of the last target in an impressive display.

Hanji stops the timer when his feet hit the ground. She quickly runs up to him and runs a swab on the back of his neck. He bristles at this and she laughs.

"I need sweat samples too!"

"Disgusting," he deadpans. "Do you save all of these in some sort of scrap book?"

 _"_ _Actually–"_

He waves a hand dismissively.

"I don't want to know."

Hanji draws another vial of his blood and puts it away in a leather case that is already filled with five others like it.

"Ok Mikasa, his time was three minutes and forty-two seconds. It's probably been a bit since you've been in gear so if you need to warm up–"

"That's unnecessary," she says shortly.

Hanji laughs lightly, "right, well then," she takes a note and holds up the timer "start!"

With overwhelming certainty, Mikasa flings her body into the air; it's as if no time has passed. Each target is merely something she knows. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and that target is there. All she wants is to be faster.

Her arms burn as she uses her strength and momentum to cut and it's the most satisfying feeling she's had in ages. Still, she knows she needs to be faster if she wants to win, so when she comes to the last target with the large drop, instead of spinning her momentum, she pulls her arms and legs in tight and she's diving to the ground. Somewhere in the back of her mind she hears a shout when she is about to hit the ground and she releases her grappling hook, her gear jerking so hard that it nearly knocks the wind out of her before she cleanly slices the last target.

The world rights itself when she lands and her focus broadens again to the scene before her. Hanji is standing there, mouth hanging open, hands gripping her hair nervously.

"Holy _shit_ I thought you weren't gonna pull out of that dive and I nearly pissed myself!"

Mikasa runs a hand through her hair and lazily ejects the now dull blades.

"What was my time?"

"Oh, right!' Hanji swabs sweat off the back of her neck and it gives Mikasa the strangest sensation, like she's some sort of animal or strange new species being observed.

"Hah! Levi you're getting old, she beat you by fifteen seconds."

Mikasa glances over at her competition and even though his expression remains neutral, she sees a bit of tension in his jaw that wasn't there before, she can tell he feels annoyed that she beat him and that makes her feel smug.

"It's not his fault, what are you, like fifty?" she says in her usual blase fashion as she sits down for Hanji to draw her blood again.

This makes him grit his teeth and glare.

"Try knocking ten years off of that, brat."

Mikasa glares back at him.

"I'm twenty-five _pipsqueak_."

"Be nice, children," Hanji says patronizingly to the both of them as she tightens a band around Mikasa's forearm and draws another vial of blood.

"Alright, I'm gonna test these later tonight and make slides out of the sweat samples later."

They do this routine for the next five days — Mikasa and Levi have blood drawn twice a day, and as each day passes Hanji seems to get more and more frustrated.

Each evening, she and Levi return to the same Inn, hardly acknowledging the other. There's a tension between the two of them. If she's honest, it's always been there, but without a constant shroud of death and despair looming over them it wasn't as noticeable.

But now she can't deny it, even though she isn't quite sure what it is.

On the fifth day they finish the course, Levi wins which irritates Mikasa to no end.

Hanji crosses her arms and says she doesn't need to draw blood.

"I'm missing something, both of you come back to my office, if you wouldn't mind."

Mikasa already feels a little wary. She doesn't like to talk at length with anyone, even former comrades.

 _Is this how Eren felt?_

Mikasa doesn't even wince when she thinks about Eren anymore, the pain more of a constant companion than anything. She thinks about him every day. Truthfully she's not sure if she ever stops thinking of him.

Hanji's office is a cluttered mess with volumes and volumes of books lining the walls and heaps of paper stacked high on her desk. The two chairs that are clearly intended for her and Levi to sit in have books and a spare change of clothes stacked on top of them.

"Oh here," Hanji just takes everything off the chairs and literally throws them on the floor, earning a frown from Mikasa's lab rat counterpart. She'd almost forgotten about his neat-freak tendencies.

They both sit down. Hanji takes out a huge ream of paper and adjusts her glasses.

"OKAY!" She says excitedly.

"So, I have a theory but I need some information from you two to test it out," Hanji looks at both of them, clearly focused.

"As you might have gathered, I'm not getting much of anything from these samples, actually the both of you don't really seem to react much at all from dangerous physical exertion, but it's no surprise that the two of you are well suited to such things," Hanji sighs. "So late at night while I was looking through some slides, I remembered a conversation the two of you had from a long time ago."

Mikasa glances over at her counterpart, his face is blank while he sits, surprisingly relaxed in his chair as if he's been here before.

"Levi, during the uprising, you spoke of having what you described as a moment , an epiphany, if you will, where you felt overcome with power . Do you remember that?"

Mikasa feels herself tense up a little bit, recalling the conversation and what came after that.

 _Eren was in danger then._

Levi sighs and crosses his arms.

"I remember the conversation. I don't remember the circumstances, it's blurry, I only remember the specific moment, what it felt like; that I never felt weak ever again, that I always knew what to do with my body in any situation."

Hanji frowns.

"Can you try to remember anything?"

He shakes his head slightly.

"My mother died when I was four, and then I was taken in by Kenny. It had to have been sometime shortly after that. I don't remember the first time I ever killed someone, I don't remember details of much until I was fighting in the Underground and then I was on my own again, until Farlan and Isabel."

Mikasa briefly wonders who Farlan and Isabel are. He says all of this in such a detached way, like it doesn't keep him up at night but it sounds sad to Mikasa. If she hadn't seen so much suffering in her life, she would probably feel sorry for him.

Hanji sighs dejectedly.

"You were probably too young, most people start remembering things reliably around that age, but trauma doesn't help things; our brains sometimes shut down and try to protect against… _difficult experiences_ , so it's probably too fuzzy. I am willing to bet that something about you fundamentally changed after this moment you're describing, on a chemical level."

Mikasa knows that Hanji is going to ask her about what happened all those years ago. Mikasa fights the urge to fidget with the hem of her shirt and look away because it's still painful to think about.

When Hanji asks her, she crosses her legs awkwardly and rocks back on her seat bones a little awkwardly.

 _Why the hell am I even bothering with this whole thing? Studying this is pointless, he and I are the only ones left, the Titans and shifters are gone._

But Mikasa doesn't like running away from a challenge, and that's all this whole thing has been so far. That and a way to occupy her time, so she's not going to run away now.

"I remember everything," she says shortly. She opens her mouth to speak, to try and talk about the murder of her parents before her young eyes, the gripping, cold, fear she felt until Eren got her to fight but the words don't come out.

Hanji and Levi are looking at her, Hanji's pen ready to write down whatever she says but her voice just isn't working.

"Fuck," she shakes her head and looks downward, ashamed.

 _So pathetic._

This is why she always needed Eren. She knew what to do, how to save people, how to fight, but when it came to her feelings, to what it actually meant to be alive it was Eren who taught her that. With him gone now, life has just been an infinite loop of confusion.

"It's okay," Hanji says with a surprising amount of tact, "we can come back to it–"

"No," Mikasa says quietly. She's so frustrated that this is difficult.

"It happened when I was nine, I'm sure you remember the rumors about me," she pauses for a second and she can tell that the both of them are remembering whatever was written down on her military records about her.

"How a nine year old girl killed three human-traffickers, but there's a lot that was left out."

She tells the story in as detatched of a fashion she can manage – how her father was stabbed when he opened the door expecting Dr. Jaeger, how her Mother, attempting to protect her put herself between the men and her.

"They didn't want to kill my mother because they had hoped to sell us into what I'm assuming was sex slavery because being Oriental is such a rarity – I don't really know what would've become of me had they succeeded, but they accidentally killed my mother. I felt paralyzed as all of this happened before me–"

"A fight or flight response," Hanji adds, taking notes quickly.

Mikasa swallows and nods.

"So one of them knocked me unconscious, but when I woke up, Eren was there."

She hasn't spoken Eren's name for three months and thirteen days, and it makes her chest feel tight. Despite this, she continues.

"But Dr. Jaeger was supposed to come by that afternoon, I was having growing pains so he was going to bring something for us to put in the bath," Mikasa is momentarily surprised at the detail she remembers, she avoids thinking about this as much as she can, "But he was running late and sent Eren ahead to let us know, and," she swallows, "I woke up to Eren untying me, he was the one who had killed my parent's murderers, he'd pretended to be some lost kid looking for directions and took them by surprise. But the third kidnapper came back, and in a fit of rage at seeing his comrades dead and his primary bounty, my mother, killed, he grabbed Eren and started to strangle him."

She glances over at Levi, who is listening passively, neither interested or bored, simply attentive.

"I was still frozen, I saw Eren's legs kicking, heard him choking but I couldn't do anything. But then he said to me: If you win, you live, if you lose, you die. If you don't fight, you can't win," she inhales quickly remembering how powerless she felt in that moment, how terrified.

"I grabbed the knife that Eren had used earlier and stood up, but I was still shaking. I couldn't do it, I was just a girl, after all," she almost laughs at this at how foreign it sounds to her now.

"But then that's when it happened, it was just like he described," she glances over at Levi and he nods.

"I just had a moment of clarity. I stopped shaking and I realized that the world was merciless, that the only option I had was to fight. It was like I was struck by lightning and filled with power, I charged forward so hard that the floorboards splintered beneath my feet and I killed him easily, saving Eren."

She sighs deeply and collects herself. "And ever since that day, I have never struggled to do anything, things that other cadets would struggle with have seemed silly. I haven't touched maneuvering gear in five years before this week yet I'm confident I could kill a dozen Titans if I had to."

Hanji finishes writing down a thought and sighs.

"See there are so many factors. For example, your father was an Ackerman yet he hadn't had any kind of moment or awakening, if you will, otherwise the outcome of your story could've been very different."

Mikasa has never thought about this. What if her father had been able to kill the kidnappers, her life may have been totally different.

"I just wish there was another Ackerman, one who hasn't experienced the moment you're describing so I can see if, for example, that Titan marker is simply dormant," Hanji then leers, a mischievous grin on her face "you two need to go find someone and make me an Ackerman baby, then I can confirm some of this."

Both of them huff and, at the same time say: "don't hold your breath."

Mikasa cheeks warm with embarrassment at their shared reaction.

"Awww, you two are no fun," she sighs. "Well, I have another idea," she continues on a bit more seriously. "I think that something changes when the two of you experience duress or a strong emotion of some kind, I've seen it, on rare occasion," she glances over at Levi and Mikasa knows that they are both remembering something specific.

"So since I can't scrounge up a bunch of Titans for you to have it out with… not that that would be ethical even if I could," Mikasa highly doubts that Hanji would have too many reservations about that if it were possible, but she ignores this, "so, what if you two were to fight?"

She has only fought, really fought with him one time. She knows that she only won because he hadn't been trying to kill her.

It's unexpected, but she feels a shiver up her spine. She can't place it, this odd feeling that has settled into her chest.

"Fine," he says shortly, getting up and already leaving the room without hearing what she has to say. "Tomorrow, I have things to do tonight."

Mikasa frowns at how he just assumes she'll agree, even though she knows she will.

So, when he's about to close the door behind him, she speaks up, "Better rest up tonight, shorty. "

The glare he gives her makes gooseflesh fan over her arms, but it's not out of fear.

"I don't need to," he says calmly.

It's excitement.

* * *

Tonight she has her weekly not-date-date with Jean, so she showers and dresses in her favorite dress. It's a grey-blue with beading and hits right below her knee. It's in the current style that flatters her more androgynous figure, and she loves how comfortable it is.

Jean really is a nice man, and she wishes that he would find someone else to pine for because if there's one thing Mikasa knows it's that she's not a nice girl.

She laughs at his jokes, enjoys the dinner that they're having at one of the new jazz clubs that are popping up left and right. They dance the new dances together and she admits that it's fun, but more importantly it makes her feel wanted; makes her ever present thoughts of Eren more like background noise. She can stop thinking about about how even before he died how he didn't want her, that she'd just been his sister when she'd wanted everything with him.

Being wanted is really all she's ever wanted if she thinks about it too long, and she just wants to be selfish, to let Jean want her even if she knows that it's not fair of her.

So when he walks her back to her room, she pulls him inside and kisses him hard on the mouth because she's lonely.

She can tell that initially he's shocked but that quickly fades. His hands are on her, gentle on her waist, as if she is this fragile, delicate thing instead of the woman who was once worth more than a hundred soldiers.

He's reaching for the clasp on the back of her dress and she quickly realizes the mistake she's making and pulls away.

He looks at her, confused.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly, "I shouldn't have done that, it's not right of me."

He crosses his arms and shifts his weight between his feet.

"Why not?" He runs a hand down her arm and grabs her hand with a tenderness that confirms exactly why she shouldn't be doing this, so she pulls free and takes a step away from him.

"I don't have feelings for you."

She sees a flash of hurt on his face but he quickly hides it and plays it cool, "I didn't ask you to marry me or anything."

She shakes her head. "That's not the point."

"Why do you insist on pushing me away? We have fun together, that's better than nothing."

She shakes her head.

"You don't understand. You don't know me," she says unkindly.

"That's because you don't let anyone get to know you!" he shouts, and it irritates her.

"Don't you think there's a reason for that? I don't need your judgement on something that you don't know the first thing about."

Now she's starting to get angry, her pulse starting to race and her hands clench into fists.

"Oh _poor Mikasa_ , " he takes a step close to her, though she can't be bothered to even think of him as a threat, "you act like you're the only one who has suffered, the only one who lost anything well guess what you're not ! If you want to sit around feeling sorry for yourself–"

"Maybe I do!" She shouts, rage finally cracking through completely. "You have no idea what I feel, what I've been through, I don't give a shit about what you think you know about me!"

Now he really looks hurt, the anger fading completely from his face as he takes a step back, wordlessly putting on his jacket that she'd pulled off of him earlier.

He turns to leave but glances over his shoulder at her one last time.

"I really hope you find peace someday, life is a lot longer than it used to be."

Then he leaves, letting the door shut behind him.

 _How dare he, acting all pious like that!_

How could he possibly understand what it was like for her, the burdens she shouldered, the lives she had been responsible for?

She grabs a vase and against her better judgement throws it against the wall, momentarily satisfied when it shatters and falls to the ground.

Still, she knows it's for the best. He's right — she wants to be alone, even if it's painful. It hurts less than loving someone else and losing them.

 _I'll never go through that again._

After a few moments she has the sense to feel slightly guilty. She knows she hurt Jean and it makes her feel like shit, reminds her of the awful, selfish person she's become.

She changes into a nightgown and fumbles with the latch on her window so she can have a cigarette.

She thinks it's more the habit than anything that calms her; reaching for her clutch, igniting a flame and having something to occupy her hands gives her a sense of relief.

It's raining again, but the street below is still busy with groups of friends drinking and laughing.

She tries to think back on the last time she felt happy – truly carefree, laugh until she cried, happy – and it feels impossible. Probably back in Shiganshina, with Eren and Armin. There had been good moments in training and in the Scouting Legion, but as the years went by, the pressure became crippling. And then after the war was over, Eren only had a limited amount of time left to live, with Armin not too far behind.

She tries not to let her mind wander down that path, but she can't help it.

She can't help that he didn't want her the way he wanted Armin, that he loved her like his family, like his sister, but it still pains her.

Even worse, she'll never see his smile again, never hold him in her arms again, never protect him.

She hears her door open and quickly glances over her shoulder, making a quick note of the knife she keeps on the dresser, but she's surprised to see Levi leaning up against her doorway.

He glances around her room; at the open trunk with unorganized clothes and the untidy but made all the same bed, then at her.

"You have a body you need help getting rid of? I heard shouting," he says dryly.

She exhales smoke out the window and flicks the ash off the end of her cigarette.

"You must be hearing things, I've been reading a novel all evening," she lies, not trying in the slightest to be convincing.

He glances over at the shattered vase.

"Mm, I throw objects when I read books all the time."

"It was a shitty ending, the girl settles."

This makes him smile — not a grin, but a small, amused look that would be easy to miss.

"Right," he agrees with her.

She sighs and glances over at him for a moment. He's wearing his nightclothes; grey and striped pants with a loose cream colored shirt, his posture nonchalant and gaze fixed on her.

"You want a cigarette?"

She isn't quite sure why she asks, but he comes into her room and shuts the door.

"Sure."

Years ago, she never would've imagined that she and Levi Heichou would be smoking cigarettes in her bedroom, but many things have turned out differently than she had thought they would.

They sit there quietly, not speaking, simply watching the rain fall and the people outside. She's positive that he would've recognized Jean's voice, and she appreciates that he doesn't ask her about it.

The silence between them is surprisingly comfortable. She appreciates that he doesn't feel the need to make small-talk, content to simply blow blue smoke into the night air.

He looks tired, but she supposes that that never truly leaves him, she knows he doesn't sleep much. His hair has started to grey at the temples, but it suits him and grey hair is a luxury in some respects.

He smokes faster than she does, so they finish at the same time. She's a little surprised when he casually flicks the butt out the window, the ember streaking orange until it hits the ground and extinguishes in a puddle.

He exhales the last bit of smoke and glances over at her.

"Try to take your own advice and get some sleep."

She watches him leave and can't help but feel that same thrill again. She doesn't know if it's at the reminder of their fight tomorrow or if it's just him, but it's one of the only genuine things she'd felt in a long time.

* * *

She wraps her knuckles in bandages and leans from side to side, letting her vertebrae pop as she bends.

Hanji and Levi are bullshitting while she draws his blood, something about how he owes her a home-cooked meal, which makes Mikasa think of him wearing an apron and chasing around kids with a wooden spoon like Carla used to and she nearly laughs.

It's a sunny weekend day with a gentle, warm breeze and blue skies as far as the eye can see. She looks up at the blueness of the sky and can't help but remember Armin, how he longed for a world without walls.

At least he got that for a few years.

"It's pretty amazing, isn't it?" Hanji says, pausing to look out at the vastness before them.

Mikasa never longed for a world without walls like Eren and Armin. She'd wanted simpler things – a house, maybe in the country, two or three kids, a real family.

 _I always search for the things I've lost, for things that I've already had, longing for the past._

"Yeah, it is," she finally replies, though she can't help but feel that its beauty is wasted on her.

"I always think of Erwin when the weather is nice like this, it's what he loved more than anything."

Hanji says this so lightly, almost happy sounding, not like she's remembering her dead friend who never got to see the world he'd dedicated his life to creating.

"Yeah he loved shit like this, what a sap," Levi agrees lightly.

"It's even better when you're not worrying about being eaten," Hanji sighs wistfully. She stares into the distance for a moment longer then turns to Mikasa.

"Okay, back to work!"

Mikasa sits down and clenches her fist so that Hanji can take a vial of her blood and add it to her steadily growing collection.

"Okay you two, so this is in the name of science," Hanji insists.

Mikasa openly watches her opponent now, as he cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders disinterestedly.

"Now, I'm not saying to kill the other one, but don't pull your punches too much, my hypothesis depends on a…" Hanji thinks for a second, her hand on her chin, "somewhat primal response, one you can't get just dancing around each other."

Mikasa smirks.

"Try to kill each other but don't kill each other, got it," she says sarcastically.

Hanji laughs, this time a little nervously.

"Don't worry, Mikasa has tried and failed to kill me before."

Arrogance is unusual for him, but maybe such a long era of peace has allowed him to relax into his title of Humanity's Strongest a little more. She'd never say it out loud, but the snarky expression on his face suits him. She can tell by the glint in his normally expressionless eyes that he's as excited about this as she is, that he wants something too, something he's missing and he's hoping to find it.

They don't wait for a signal to start, they don't need it because she knows he feels it too, a crackle in the air, a moment of electricity between the two of them that drives her forward.

More than going out dancing, more than fucking Jean Kirstein, more than flying through the air in maneuvering gear, fighting him feels like something inside her just falls into place.

Her body moves both with his and counter to his, each blow met perfectly with either an evasion or a counter attack of his own, until finally she lands a blow to his stomach. It would knock the wind out of any normal person, but she can feel that he tensed his abdominal muscles at exactly the right moment so that her fist feels like she's punched into a brick wall.

Still, his balance is thrown and it sends him to the ground. He uses the momentum to roll away from her but she's too fast. She tackles him to the ground and pins his shoulders to the ground moving to knee him in the groin, but when she tries to get the momentum, he overpowers her with brute strength, elbowing her in the throat and exploding upwards, grabbing her hair tightly in his fist.

She takes a blow to the head so hard that her vision goes black for a second, and it keeps coming, next a hard blow to her belly that winds her and before she can guess next his boot is on her cheek and pushing her head hard into the ground. She tries to elbow his shin, but her head is still swimming and it hurts her more than it probably hurts him.

"You disappoint me, Mikasa," he deadpans as he twists his heal mockingly on her cheek. "Do you like eating dirt like this?" He bends over and grabs both of her wrists, bringing her up to her knees limply, though she still can't catch her breath because her head is swimming from the last blow to her head.

He plants his foot in between her shoulder blades and he starts to pull on her arms. She can't help but let out a groan as he slowly continues the process of dislocating her shoulders. He runs his hands up to her biceps, still gripping so hard that she feels like her bones could snap from his grasp alone. He leans down close enough that she can feel his breath on the nape of her neck.

"You look pretty like this, maybe if you had gotten on your knees for Eren he would've noticed you as a woman instead of his sister."

His words are low and suddenly she can feel her heartbeat in her head; anger doesn't even begin to describe the sensation, it's an overwhelming combination of grief at the mention of the person she loved more than anything, of his rejection of that love, shame at her inadequacy, and blinding, white hot rage.

She does it so quickly that she doesn't even think about the movement, she doesn't know even know how it happens but she's free from his grasp and is just hitting him. Over and over again, and it feels so fucking good that she never wants to stop.

She hears shouting, but it's somewhere far away. Something pulls at her arm as she brings it back to hit Levi in the face again, but she easily shakes it off and lands another blow before she feels a pinch and her vision fades to black.

* * *

She wakes up and feels like she's simultaneously hungover and been chewed up and spit out by a Titan.

She's laying down in a bed with soft white linens, a glass of water on the bedside table. She grabs it and downs the whole thing without thinking and tries to move to get out of bed but she feels too stiff to move without stumbling, so she stays put.

 _I must be in Hanji's room._

As if her thought somehow summoned her, the bedroom door opens and Hanji, carrying a tray of breakfast food enters.

"Oh good, I thought you'd be awake soon," she unfolds the legs on the tray and sets it neatly in Mikasa's lap.

"What happened?"

"Oh, I sedated you before you could kill Levi or make his concussion worse, whichever came first."

Mikasa glares at the scientist. It's coming back to her, what he'd said, how she had wanted nothing more than to hit him over and over again, until all of his teeth were knocked out of his mouth and his eyes swelled shut, how good it had felt every time her fist made contact with his body.

The memory exhilarates her; what it had been like to hit him, the simultaneous lack of control of herself juxtaposed with the power she had over him.

She's experienced this sensation before – pleasure and excitement at inflicting pain on someone else – but she feels justified in her actions and confident enough in his strength that she doesn't feel guilty.

"You're the one who said to fight him for real."

Hanji nods.

"Oh I know that, but even I was a little surprised at how seriously you took me, what he said to you must have really pissed you off. I like to think he would've gotten out of it had I not stuck you, but I didn't want to chance it."

Hanji clearly sees Mikasa's deepening frown and the flush creeping up her neck at the memory of what he'd said to her.

Noticing this Hanji adopts a contrite expression.

"Hey, whatever he said don't hold it against him, before you got here yesterday I told him to make you angry."

"What?" She growls.

"I knew that telling you to fight without holding back wouldn't be good enough, so I told him to say or do whatever he needed to to set you off. Maybe he was a bit too good at finding just the right button to push, but he was only doing what I requested."

Mikasa is still angry that he'd said what he said, but somehow it's less humiliating to her that it hadn't been completely unprompted.

 _He still had to think it._

"Whatever," she dismisses, trying to act like she's not bothered even though that's far from the truth. "Did you get what you need?"

Hanji's eyes light up, pure excitement.

"I think so, I took a few samples from you while you were out, I've already started doing some preliminary things and it's promising. I'll need more time to make conclusions but I don't think I'll need to stab you again for quite a while."

Mikasa nods. She doesn't know why she cares if Hanji completes her research, there's no reason or benefit for her, but she can tell that it makes Hanji happy, this pursuit of knowledge in itself enough for her.

Mikasa slices the pancakes on the plate and eats them while Hanji rambles about specific proteins and other things Mikasa doesn't really understand nor care to.

"Here's some pain relief for if you're feeling stiff," Hanji sets two white tablets on her tray after she finishes her food.

Mikasa must pull a face because Hanji starts to laugh.

"I know, different times, right? Would've been nice to pop a few of these after an expedition, we just didn't have stuff like this, you'd be lucky if we had enough hot water for a decent shower."

Mikasa thanks her for the medication and swallows the pills. In an hour she feels pretty good. She has some nasty looking purple bruises all over her body, but she's experienced far worse.

Since Hanji doesn't need anything else, Mikasa goes back to the Inn.

A week passes and she hasn't seen Levi around and assumes he's left for something else. It's probably for the best because she's not sure if she could stop herself from punching him in the face again. Still, she can't help but think back to fighting him, how she hadn't felt that way, that indescribable rush in years.

She spends another week stuck in her head, the mundane nature of doing chores to earn her keep, reading books and smoking cigarettes not enough to keep the darkness away – thoughts about people being eaten, about waking up every single day wondering if she was going to die that day, or the next, or the next haunt her. But worst of all she thinks about Eren; his face, his smile, his laugh, all things that used to bring her genuine happiness but have now left her only with bitterness and a longing for the past.

Without the annoying but effective distraction that was Jean Kirstein's company, she decides to head out to the country to visit Connie and Sasha.

It's a long trek, about a half a day if she catches a ride on a passing truck. She thinks that the man who offers her a lift recognizes her, but he doesn't want to say anything because he's not sure. She supposes that she looks a bit different than she used to – the dress and stockings can throw people off when before she'd been seen carrying blades and wearing her green cloak, the wings of freedom burned onto her back.

He drops her off at the road that winds back to Connie and Sasha's forest home, but not before offering a quiet thank-you for her years of service to humanity.

It's funny how after everything was said and done, the few remaining members of the scouting legion had been elevated to humanity's saviors when most of their existence they'd been derided as tax payer funded waste.

Still, she accepts his thanks and walks up the dirt road. It's about two miles and despite the oppressively hot summer heat, she finds the forest beautiful.

The Springer family lives in a cottage not unlike the one she grew up in with her parents, though in the yard they fly a flag with the wings of freedom on a green field. She raps on the door and inside she can hear rustling, perhaps someone stumbling, and then Connie answers the door, his almost a year old daughter propped up on his hip.

"Oh hey Mikasa! Come in, it's so good to see you!" He says excitedly.

Their house is truly a home , fresh cut flowers on the window sill, Elise's toys strewn about the floor and framed pictures on the walls. Photographs, which are still somewhat rare even though they are becoming more common, of their wedding day, of their small family and even the first photo that Mikasa had ever been in, one with all of the 104th scouts who'd survived the war – Armin and Eren eyes bright and smiling, an arm over each other's shoulders, and her standing just behind them, looking upon them.

That was always my role, wasn't it, to watch them?

She shakes her head and stops the thought in its tracks.

"Sasha is out hunting for dinner, but she's pretty fast so I'm sure she'll be back pretty soon, what brings you out here?"

"I wanted to get out of the city and come see my favorite little girl," she smiles at Elise who is now on the ground, her chubby little hands playing with a block and attempting to shove it in her mouth.

Connie laughs. "Well you know you're always welcome with us, Sasha will be so excited to have you!"

Mikasa sits on the ground and plays with the baby. She's a happy, chubby little thing with eyes that are big and turning brown like her mother's. She must be about eight months old now.

True to his word, Sasha shows up within the hour and is thrilled to see Mikasa, the hugging her tightly and kissing her cheek affectionately.

"Connie take Mikasa's things to the spare room, how rude of you," Sasha admonishes, though Mikasa can tell by the way her gaze softens upon her husband that she doesn't mean it.

"Is there anything I can do to help you out?"

Sasha picks up Elise and kisses her on the cheek, Elise giggling and grabbing at her mother's chest. Sasha sighs.

"Yeah, keep me company while I feed her and then help me go slice up the deer I got for dinner!

Mikasa watches as Sasha unbuttons her blouse and puts Elise to her breast. The baby is all too happy to eat and simultaneously kick her Mother's chest while she does so. Sasha sighs and tries to hold her feet down but then Elise starts to hit her breast and hum.

Sasha groans.

"Motherhood, I tell you," she says glibly and Mikasa can't help but laugh at seeing what is often depicted as the pinnacle of femininity look so ungraceful.

Eventually Elise calms down and starts to eat quietly.

"So, what brings you all the way out here?"

Mikasa shrugs.

"Mm, big city life can get overwhelming at times."

This is something Mikasa has always liked about Sasha. Sasha has an uncanny ability to fill in the blanks; to state sometimes uncomfortable truths in a casual way while not prying deep into anything personal.

Sasha talks about Elise, about how she's getting her first tooth and pulling herself up on everything she can, how Connie has been running a sewing business out of their shed that's taken off far better than either of them expected so Sasha has had plenty of time to cook and take care of Elise like she wants.

"That's great, I didn't know Connie could sew."

"Oh yeah, he grew up next to his town's seamstress and these new sewing machines make it so much easier," Sasha says lightly.

"Yeah and our new model is making it so I can hardly keep up with business," Connie says, overhearing their conversation as he walks back in from outside.

Sasha laughs but she remembers something and adopts a more serious expression.

"Speaking of, I asked him to come by later tonight, there's something wrong with Marigold, she bit at me yesterday."

Connie frowns.

"That's unlike her."

"Marigold's our horse," Sasha explains.

"Oh, is your model also veterinarian?"

The two of them share a look and laugh, clearly it's something of an inside joke.

"No, not really, just a neighbor who knows more about horses than either of us, He's–"

But Sasha cuts him off, shushing him because Elise has fallen asleep.

Sasha carefully tiptoes to their bedroom with the peacefully sleeping baby, and comes back shortly after making a thumbs up sign.

"Alright, time for a drink, she'll be asleep til later tonight!" Sasha says excitedly.

"Don't we have to go cut up that deer?"

"Who says we can't do that while drinking?"

So that's how Mikasa finds herself outside, holding a glass of wine while Sasha, well into her second beer, pulls the skin off of the doe she felled that afternoon.

Mikasa tries to help, but Sasha bats her hand away.

"No offense but I can get more meat off this thing than you can, and I don't want you to get your dress dirty."

Mikasa laughs at how much the beer has loosened Sasha's tongue and just takes another sip of her wine.

"So, have you made any new friends in the city?" Sasha grunts as she carves away backstraps off of the deer.

Mikasa finishes the rest of her wine glass and pours a little more from the bottle they brought outside and laughs.

"No, opposite actually, I can't manage to keep any." If she wasn't a total lightweight and this wine wasn't strong, she would admonish herself for how pathetic that sounds, but the happy buzz she has going eases the embarrassment.

Sasha clicks her tongue.

"I'm sure it's not as bad as all that."

"Yeah, well you know how I'm so warm and friendly all the time," she says sarcastically.

Sasha grimaces and doesn't disagree, but then shakes her head.

"Well then I guess you're stuck with me and Connie, we're boring parents and all but we don't mind if you're kind of a bitch sometimes," she shrugs.

Mikasa smiles at Sasha's teasing. If anything Sasha is familiar with her quirks, and that can be nice.

She'll feel guilty if she stays too long, because Mikasa knows she's mostly a cloud of grief and self-loathing and that anyone as perceptive as Sasha can pick up on that, but for now she's happy she came to visit, it takes her mind off of Hanji's crazy experimenting, off of Levi and the thrill fighting him gave her.

 _Feeling anything is better than feeling nothing at all._

Sasha suddenly stops carving the meat and sets down her butcher's knife, clearly hearing someone.

"That's the model veterinarian," she says lightly.

When Mikasa sees the very man she'd been thinking about dismounting off of a chestnut mare, Mikasa can't help but think that life is strange.


	2. Chapter 2

Levi runs his hands gently down the horse's hind leg, pressing here and there until the horse whinnies and tries to kick him. He shushes the pained animal with a gentleness that Mikasa finds surprising from a man who is so skilled at violence.

After he calms the horse, he steps away and looks to Sasha, a frown on his face.

"She's gone lame, I can't say if she'll recover from it, and surely not soon enough for you two to go without."

Sasha frowns.

"What would you recommend?"

He sighs.

"You could sell her, and she'll surely be killed," he pauses for a second, "or I could take her off your hands, I have room for her, I'll trade you the more even-keeled mare I have. I wouldn't give her to anyone else because she's still a war horse, but I know you can handle yourselves fine."

Sasha frowns and shakes her head.

"No, that's too generous; a lame horse for a healthy one, you have to accept homemade sausage and a new suit in addition to the horse for it to be fair."

When Sasha gets riled up, her accent starts to come out and Mikasa has to resist the urge to smile – she knows how self-conscious Sasha always was about it, but it's such an endearing trait.

Mikasa can also tell this isn't the first time they've argued about fair trades — Sasha has always been stubborn about this kind of thing, she refuses to be indebted to someone, even a friend or comrade.

He sighs and stands up.

"First of all, she's not just a lame horse, she has a mild temperament, the fact that she's in this much pain and even let me approach her proves that. Maybe it'll rub off on the other asshole horses I keep around. Secondly, I have the space, it's not like I'm going to run out of grass anytime soon, and third, you can't go without a horse, how else are you going to get into town, it's not a short walk. Besides, you took care of the others while I was gone a few weeks ago, so I owe you."

Sasha crosses her arms and looks at him with a stern expression that Mikasa thinks looks more than a little odd, like a school teacher chastising a rowdy student.

"Well, you'll take the meat and clothes, besides, the clothes are free advertising," she says shrewdly.

Mikasa almost snickers when she sees his cheeks flush a little at this comment, so she can't help but poke a little.

"Sasha says you've taken up modeling, should I expect to see your face in the paper?"

He glares at her sharply and Mikasa takes another drink from her wine glass, satisfied with the fact that she has managed to irritate him.

"We don't even need to take out an ad, if he wears one of Connie's suits into the town or the city, he gets so many people asking him where he got it that Connie can't keep up! We should really be paying him."

Mikasa glances at his attire, today a lightweight, brown tweed jacket and a cornflower blue button up shirt and tie.

 _I can see why business is good._

The thought surprises her. It makes her uncomfortable enough that she looks away and takes another drink of her wine.

Levi begrudgingly agrees to Sasha's terms, but not before Sasha tricks him into staying for dinner.

Sasha and Connie are immensely gracious hosts – Sasha cooks food with her heart, each dish is prepared with care and passion. With the greater access to resources this new era has brought the meal is delicious and flavorful with herbs and seasoning that Mikasa hardly knows how to put a word to.

"You're too generous with your time Heichou, you're gonna end up swindled," Connie says seriously, adopting an expression of a far older man when Sasha explains their horse situation.

"Don't call me that," he says, "and I know a thing or two about not getting swindled."

Mikasa has only heard rumors, but she recalls that before he joined the Scouting Legion he was a thug in the Underground city. She can only imagine what kind of transactions he'd gotten up to.

"Fine," Connie sighs, patting his belly and taking a second helping of dessert.

"Sasha you're going to make him fat with all this dessert."

Sasha laughs and Connie turns red.

"I don't make dessert every night, it's a special occasion with the both of you here!"

Levi glances over at her, his gaze simultaneously lazy and appraising.

"What brings you all the way out here? Your face looks better than I would've expected" he says, addressing her for the first time this evening.

"I could say the same for you," she snaps back quickly. She finishes her glass of wine glaring at him the whole while.

"You guys got into a fight!?"

"Hanji was playing mad scientist and we both let it get a little out of hand," he explains.

"Of _course_ you did," Sasha sighs, clearly exasperated. "How is Hanji, doing well?"

"As well as a four eyed freak can be, happy to have a bunch of government funding for whatever crazy experiment her heart desires," he says lightly.

"Crazy experiments that involve you two?" Connie asks.

"Wants to know why we're so good at killing shit," Mikasa says dryly.

"Ah, really?!"

"I always assumed good diet and exercise," Connie jokes.

Mikasa stabs at her cake.

"Yeah, the expedition I killed eleven titans was because I had a great breakfast and took a brisk walk the day before."

Levi laughs darkly at her sarcastic comment while Sasha and Connie look uncomfortable.

"Everyone has something they're good at," Sasha says, a little tense, because until now, it's always been something unspoken; her aptitude for violence and the uncanny similarity between herself and the former Captain Levi.

She can't help but think way back to the Cadet Corps when Annie had called her a monster.

Sasha's about to say something but the baby starts to cry from the other room, so she gets up quickly to go take care of her, but not before telling Mikasa to make herself at home in the spare room.

"I still feel like we're getting too good of a deal for Marigold, but since you insist, how do you want to get her to your place?"

"I'll have to walk her, she can't go fast so I can come by tomorrow with that mare."

"Okay, that sounds good, what do you want for a suit?"

He grumbles and says "Whatever you have laying around is fine."

Mikasa starts doing the dishes as the two men squabble over who is getting the better deal in this whole horse exchange and go outside.

Since when was Levi the de facto horse expert? In the Legion they'd had soldiers that took care of the horses, usually someone who'd grown up around them, was a farrier's son or something like that, and certainly not officers; they were too busy doing far more important tasks.

When she's finished the dishes, she goes to the spare room where her things are. The bed is worn and sags a little bit, but she likes it that way; it's a sign of use, like it's been lived in for a while. Something about that comforts her, reminds her of happier times.

She doesn't want to bother Connie and Sasha for long, but being alone is just getting too difficult. It keeps her up at night and creeps down into her chest, leaving her with a terrifying numbness that she doesn't know how to get rid of.

 _That's a lie._

Fighting helped, for a moment. Helped her feel something besides wrong in her own skin.

 _And he's the only one strong enough to fight you._

She hears Connie come inside and start getting ready for bed so she decides to do the same. She changes into her nightgown and is about to go outside for a cigarette, but she hesitates before she leaves the room.

She digs down to the bottom of her trunk until she finds her old red scarf and wraps it around her neck. Immediately she feels a sense of calm wash over her, like everything will somehow be okay, at least for a moment.

She knows it's silly, but if she thinks hard enough she can imagine that it smells like Eren, remember what having him near was like as vividly as she possibly can with him gone.

It hurts too much to wear it every single day, but it's also the thing that brings her the most comfort, so she saves it for the evening, usually when she is alone.

 _I'll wrap that around you, as many times as you want. Now and forever._

She knew that life could end at any moment, but she hadn't truly believed that forever could be so short.

She opens the front door quietly and sits on the steps leading to the house. The sun has set completely now but the moon is half full, so the forest clearing is nicely illuminated.

The smell of sulfur when she lights her match, the sound of the cigarette burning when she inhales, the crickets chirping, her scratchy red scarf and her bare feet on the rough wooden steps; these are things she finds comforting.

She closes her eyes, leans her head against the handrail and for a quick moment her mind is quiet.

Until she hears a twig snap and her eyes fly open, body tensed and ready for anything, only to see Levi walking across the yard, his hands in his pockets.

"How long have you been there?" She snaps.

He looks at her, his gaze lingering on her red scarf and Mikasa can't help but feel embarrassed at his scrutiny. She quickly takes it off and folds it beside her, all the while fighting the flush on her cheeks despite the fact that it's futile. So she settles for looking away from him and taking another drag of her cigarette.

"I was just leaving," he nods his head towards the horse he rode.

She flicks the ash off the end of her cigarette boredly and looks at him as if to say: _don't let me stop you._

For whatever reason, he looks amused and this pisses her off.

"What's so funny?"

"You are."

She feels herself starting to flush, but this time out of irritation.

He surprises her by taking a step near her and quickly grabbing the cigarette she'd been smoking from between her fingers. He looks at it thoughtfully, something of a smirk on his face.

"If you think about it, these are a disgusting habit," he says lowly.

She stands up and, just as quick as he was, steps forward off the porch and snags it back from him. She takes a long drag and holds her breath for a moment. The smoke fills her lungs until it burns just a little bit and her head buzzes, then she leans forward and exhales slowly, the smoke fanning over his face in lazy swirls.

"I don't really care what you think about anything I do, hypocrite," she says, this time refusing to break eye contact with him.

His expression is still cool and indifferent despite the fact that she stands taller than him and he has to look up to meet her gaze.

Years ago she had fantasized about pummeling him, but that had been because of the tribunal where he'd harmed Eren. Now she finds herself wanting to smack him around for entirely different reasons. It was thrilling, a reprieve from the mundane and the darkness of her own thoughts.

There's something between them that she hasn't experienced before. Part of her thinks it's because of the pervasive numbness that has become so normal to her, that anything besides nothing starts to feel like lightning.

Another part of her feels like it's something magnetic, something drawing her to him in a way she doesn't really understand, an attraction that she can't dismiss as easily as she would like to.

She drops the cigarette to the ground, not breaking eye contact with him.

"I wanted to kill you two weeks ago."

"That was the point."

His bored response irritates her. He's not afraid of her and that bothers her. It makes her want to _make_ him afraid of her, if anything just to exercise a minute amount of control over something in her life.

So she takes a step closer to him, and another, and another and she pushes him against the side of the shed. She's felt this way before; a focus that has an edge of something slightly animal that keeps her alert, keeps her ready for whatever comes next.

He doesn't look afraid but rather amused.

"I want to fight you again."

"Are you gonna try to kill me again?"

"Can't be sure, why, are you afraid?"

He's fast and she's riled up so she barely dodges the punch he throws.

"No, it's honestly exciting," he replies, his fist still clenched.

It's instant. That same exhilarating, electric feeling she'd felt last time. It spreads through her body and she can breath again, the world suddenly clearer.

He lands a punch to her face and she stumbles backwards, hand reflexively moving to where his hit landed. She moves her tongue along her gumline and tastes blood, but nothing's loose.

He walks toward her slowly and takes off his suit jacket, letting it fall to the ground in a careless heap.

Her senses somehow feel heightened. The throbbing in her cheek, the grass under her bare feet, the shadows cast by the half moon in the cloudless sky, the sound of her breathing; everything is sharper, more vivid than normal, like she's seeing the world as it is and everything else is some sort of strange, depressing dream.

Whatever it is, she wants more of it. She's tired of feeling so disconnected and frustrated with everyone and everything around her.

He is fast, but she is too. She feints to the left and lands a hard kick to his temple with her right foot. He's disoriented for a moment and that's all she needs. She grabs his tie and pulls him down into her knee. She lands three more hits in rapid succession and with each one she can swear her world goes sharper, clearer and her body feels full of power because she knows that she's winning, that this is something she is good at because he's Humanity's Strongest but that doesn't matter because she is in control.

She grabs him by the hair and pulls hard, pushing him to his knees, just like he had done to her two weeks ago. He spits out blood on the grass and she can hear his breathing coming in labored pants.

It's unlike her; she's not talkative and she gloats even less, but she can't resist because she wants to get back at him for what he had said, how he'd mocked her.

"Look at you, I'm not sure I'd say you look pretty," she pulls on his hair again just because she can and this time he groans, "but I'm okay with it. Do you like being like this? Forced onto your knees by–"

The words stop in her throat completely when she feels his hands on her legs, but he isn't grabbing her. No, instead it's his fingertips and palms smoothing over her calves, slowly up to the backs of her knees.

"I wouldn't say you've forced me to do anything," she hears him say.

 _What?! He…_

Her hand slowly lets go of his hair and falls to her side.

She's frozen in her place, like her feet have sprung roots and burrowed deep into the ground.

 _He can't be–_

But then he has a hand underneath her nightgown and on the inside of her thigh.

"Ah…I…You–"

"Do you want me to keep going?"

His words are sarcastic and dry, what she would expect from him, but the look he gives her is challenging, asks her if she's going to stop their fight here. She feels heat creeping up her neck, she's sure that her ears are bright red and who knows, maybe her hair will turn red too. He doesn't seem too concerned with her face at the moment though.

 _I'm not backing down._

She takes a deep breath because she knows that she shouldn't be doing this, that this isn't what she signed up for, but at the same time, she still feels it; still feels the electricity, that lightning in her veins that lifts the clouds away and ignites a fire in her chest. It's the same sharp clarity of simply knowing what to do without thinking about it that she used to get when felling titans or fighting other scouts, she feels it right now with every part of her.

"Shut up and finish what you started."

She can't see that well in the moonlight, but she can still see that this makes him smirk, his eyes alight with excitement.

There's a commonality between the way he fights and the way he touches her. His touch isn't rough, but it's certain. Everything feels natural, like all of it was somehow predetermined by some unknowable force. Some people would call it fate, but she knows that that's bullshit – nothing happens for any reason, everything just happens. No, it's not fate that has brought them together like this, but she still can't deny that something has been pushing them to this moment – an undeniable, powerful force that she thinks comes from deep inside of herself, whispering, praying that she'd end up fighting a different kind of battle with him.

His mouth is on the inside of her thigh and she lets out a short gasp of air. His hands smooth their way up the backs of her thighs, up to the swell of her hip, grasping at her tightly. He's seems content like this, content to kiss and bite at the insides of her legs, up to the edge where her panties meet her thigh. He's lazy about it, his thumbs tracing patterns on her hips and flirting with the elastic on her waistband.

 _If you're going to do this, do it._

So she reaches beneath her nightgown and tugs her underwear down her legs and steps out of them.

Her inexperience is getting the better of her. She knows what she wants, knows that she's the one in control, that all she has to do is take what she wants.

He must sense this.

"Tell me what you want," he murmurs against her thigh.

She feels like she's surely going to burn up and for a moment things get hazy again, she loses that razor edge of clarity that she's been chasing all evening and that's not okay.

So she threads her hand into his hair again and pushes his head between her legs.

Before she can prevent it she lets out a moan because his tongue on her like this is almost too much. That feeling of power – seeing him there, on his knees, his mouth on her and pleasing her, is giving her that same, heady dose of adrenaline she's been chasing all evening.

He's taking his time because his tongue moves slowly over all of her, but barely grazing where she wants him. So she clenches her hand that's still fisted in his hair and growls: "stop teasing me."

This time he glares up at her, his gaze equal parts aggression and defiance, but she doesn't back down and jerks her hips forward against his mouth because it's what feels good and that's what she cares about right now.

He moves faster now, his mouth more purposeful than exploratory and in a minute she's starting to gasp, her hand clenching at his hair, her other on his shoulder, gripping so hard that she's sure it'll leave a bruise.

It's surprising how it sneaks up on her, like suddenly with the right gesture, the right motion of his tongue, that she's so close that it feels physically painful. She knows that if he stops she may just die on the spot from frustration. He grips her ass hard with his hand and she's coming harder than she ever has in her entire life, a steady stream of curses leaving her mouth, her hips grinding up against his face.

"Fuck," she cries, her voice broken and wanton sounding.

She pushes him away because it's too much when she's coming down and he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. He's still on his knees, hair mussed from all her grabbing and his tie loose, but his expression is calm.

She can't stand that look, that cool confidence, that blank, expressionless face. She feels something snap inside of her again, her pleasure clouded mind gaining focus again. She tackles him and pins his shoulders to the ground. She mindlessly pulls off his tie and rips the buttons of his shirt apart and smooths her hands down his bared chest. When she undoes his pants and pulls his cock out it's like she's watching someone else, some animal part of herself that is content to take take take because all she wants is more.

Fucking him is easy; easy because of the way he moves his hips in time with hers, easy because now she can see him starting to unravel – a gasp here, a clenched fist there, it's all perfect to her, because she is going to win this. She's going to take what she wants from him, she's going to best him.

So she leans forward and bites at his neck, smooths her tongue over the pulse she can feel beneath her mouth, clutches at him while she moves against him, taking pride in every sound she wrings out of him.

When he finishes he grips her hip hard and presses his head back into the ground, his eyes shut tight, a low moan of relief the only sound he makes.

Suddenly she feels tired and uncoordinated, like she's either drunk or extremely sleep deprived. She rolls off of him and onto her back, her head in the grass, her cotton nightgown still rucked up to her hips as she catches her breath.

If at any point in the past she had thought of fucking Levi Ackerman in Sasha and Connie's lawn, she probably would've thought herself crazy, submitted herself to an institution and felt intense embarrassment.

But she's surprised that there's none of that. She doesn't feel embarrassed, because honestly how different was any of that from fighting him? Most importantly, she feels more grounded, more sane, than she's felt in years. That feeling of giving in to the intuitive, trance-like state that she'd lived in during her time in the Scouting Legion feels like coming home, like she was always meant to be this way.

After about a minute of laying there, not touching but next to each other in the grass, he sits up and starts to right himself.

"You ruined my shirt," he says, clearly annoyed.

She props herself up on her elbows and looks at him, torn shirt and rumbled appearance, and she can't help but think to herself that she does find something about him attractive, though perhaps not pretty.

"Sorry about that," she says, but her tone says that she's anything but.

He runs a hand through his hair (which Mikasa remembers is softer than it looks like it should be) and glances over at his horse across the yard. He makes to leave, but before he leaves, he glances over his shoulder and looks at her.

"Next time, I'm not going to let you win."

The look he gives her makes her hair stand on end and sends a shiver through her body.

 _Next time._

She gets up slowly, conscious of his eyes on her. She grabs her discarded panties off the ground and puts them back on slowly, making sure that she doesn't appear rushed because she wants him to look at her, watch her, want her. From the look on his face, she can tell that she was successful.

"Looking forward to it."

When she goes to bed that night, she sleeps better than she has in years.

* * *

Mikasa sleeps later than usual, waking to the sun streaming in through her window and the birds singing in the trees outside. She can hear the baby in the living room playing and someone in the kitchen.

She picks a simple cream white blouse and a navy pleated skirt. She folds up her red scarf and places it at the bottom of the trunk, where it always goes these days.

Sasha is finishing up dishes from breakfast while Elise plays with her blocks on the ground.

"Morning Mikasa, I set aside some breakfast for you!"

Sasha is cheery and kinder than Mikasa feels she deserves, but she gratefully accepts the food and coffee.

Motherhood suits Sasha well, and Mikasa can't help but feel a slight pang of jealousy. Everything about it is so mundane, so delightfully normal and it brings back memories of a time so long ago that it's starting to fade from Mikasa's memory. Of gathering flowers with her mother, helping her father skin rabbits and even bedtime stories with Carla.

Elise already seems as mischievous as her father, so when Sasha stops paying attention for even a moment the little girl is crawling and attempting to pull herself up on the furniture and break things, so Mikasa gets on the ground and plays with her so Sasha can take a minute to put her feet up.

"Gah, thanks Mikasa, it makes me sound like a bad person but I honestly get tired playing with her all the time!"

Mikasa smiles softly and shakes a stuffed rabbit in front of the girl, her eyes lighting up in excitement as she reaches for it.

"It's okay, take a rest."

So Sasha sits and reads the morning newspaper with her feet up on an ottoman.

After about a half hour, Elise starts to rub her eyes and fuss because she's hungry and tired, so a rejuvenated Sasha picks her up to feed her. Mikasa stays on the floor and gathers Elise's toys neatly into a pile.

"So, what do you have going on today?"

Sasha sighs and rocks back and forth a little as she feeds Elise.

"I have a lot of meat to preserve because we're low on dry ice and I don't want it to go to waste, and Connie has a huge backlog of work, so I was going to help him out with cutting fabric. He definitely didn't know what he was getting himself into with this whole thing. Then Heichou is coming by to take Marigold," Sasha sighs again, a sad expression on her face "I really like Marigold, she's a sweet animal but I know it's for the best, it's just not practical for us to keep a lame horse."

The mention of Levi makes her stomach flip a little awkwardly, the memory of his hands on her legs, his mouth between her thighs, his quick breathing when he came apart beneath her…somehow in the daylight hour, the whole encounter feels a little dreamlike though she knows it was anything but, she has the soreness in her limbs to prove it.

"Mikasa?" Sasha asks, concerned.

She must be staring off into space.

"When did he get so into horses?" she asks, trying to sound as uninterested as possible.

"Oh, after the war and everything, a bunch of the horses from the Legion didn't have anywhere to go. You might not know this but they were bred very specifically for the Legion, so they're too mean and need too much exercise for casual horse owners, and they make terrible work horses because they won't plow," Sasha shrugs, "so I think he just decided he needed something to do. Connie and I help when we can because we know how to handle them, but gosh, some of them are pretty mean, Commander Erwin's old horse in particular, that grump only listens to Heichou," Sasha pulls up her sleeve, revealing an ugly, yellowing bruise the size of a fist, "did this to me while we were taking care of them for a couple weeks, bah!"

For some reason this doesn't fit with whatever image of Levi Mikasa has. It seems oddly sentimental – taking care of his fallen comrade's horses – for a man so stoic, so severe in both language and action.

For the first time, Mikasa considers that maybe he feels just as aimless as she does.

She shakes her head, dismissing the thought.

"I can help Connie, I know how to sew," she says, changing the subject deliberately.

"Really?"

Mikasa frowns.

"Yeah, why is that so surprising?"

"Oh, no reason!" Sasha sputters. Elise chooses that moment to pop off of her mother's breast and start biting and pinching her out of boredom.

"Ah!" Sasha yelps and pulls the baby away, sitting her upright, "No! Don't do that!" she admonishes sharply.

At this, Elise frowns and bursts into tears.

"Gah," Sasha's shoulders slump and she bounces her. "There's no need to cry, just don't bite Mama, that's all!"

Obviously such a detailed instruction is lost on the infant, but her mother's kind voice seems to help and instead Elise just continues to pout and rub her eyes.

"I'm gonna go lay down with her and hopefully she'll take a nap. Connie is out in the shed if you want to help him, but please don't feel obligated."

Mikasa doesn't want to sit around doing nothing, so she does go out to the shed. Connie looks a little frazzled with patterns and fabric all around him, patterns hung over dress forms every which, way pins tucked into his mouth and a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Instead of insisting he doesn't need help like she imagines he normally would, Connie has no reservations about putting her straight to work cutting fabric and pinning pieces together while he operates the complex new sewing machine with focus that surprises her considering he's always been a little spastic.

The work is calming, she likes that it occupies her hands and is detail oriented enough that she needs to focus on the task at hand, but not so tedious that she finds it tiring.

After about two hours, Connie says he needs to take a break so he doesn't go cross eyed, so they go outside and sit down with some glasses of water, but not before Connie grabs a few swatches of fabric, explaining that he wants to see what they look like in natural light.

Sasha comes outside and joins them with a freshly rested baby, setting Elise on the ground to play with the grass and a stick.

"Ooh, what are these swatches for?" she asks excitedly, resting a hand gently on his shoulder and peering over his shoulder casually.

"Heichou's suit, he told me to just use whatever I have on hand and you know how much I hate that."

Sasha sighs. "Stubborn," she picks up two swatches and immediately tosses them aside.

"Definitely not those two, they'll make him look washed out and tired," Sasha looks at three others, picking them up and looking at them at different angles.

Mikasa sips her water as they talk about the merits of each swatch, not really listening as she runs her finger around the rim of the glass.

"What do you think, Mikasa?"

She thinks about saying she doesn't care what kind of outfit that Levi wears, but she doesn't have the heart when she sees Connie and Sasha's animated expressions, genuinely interested in her opinion.

So she glances at the fabric, one an olive drab color with a slightly grey hue, and the other a brown.

"This one," she says quickly, choosing the olive one.

"Awwh come on you're just agreeing with Sasha!" Connie complains.

"No she's not, she's just got good taste!"

"Whatever!"

"He has a cool complexion, so the brown is too warm, it'll make him look sick, the green has a cool undertone so it's more suited to him," she explains.

They look at her as if she's sprouted antlers.

"Just my opinion," she mumbles.

As if she needed to feel more awkward, she hears a horse galloping down the road and she knows it's him.

Sure enough he's walking the horse that he's trading them over to where they're sitting. Instead of a suit he's wearing just a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, pants and suspenders. She can tell that he was working before he got here because a light sheen of sweat coats his body and she has to stop herself from blatantly staring at him.

"Hey Heichou!" Sasha waves, scooping up Elise from the ground and propping her on her hip.

He clenches his jaw "don't call me that," he says tiredly.

"Sorry, force of habit," Sasha says lightly though Mikasa is pretty sure she and Connie do it to irritate him.

Levi glances at Mikasa and sees the fabric swatches, still in her hands.

"What are you three doing?"

Connie smirks and glances wryly at Mikasa.

"Oh, Mikasa was just telling us about your _cool toned complexion_."

Mikasa's eyes widen for a moment and she drops the fabric swatches like they burn her hands.

"I–that's not–"

But Connie and Sasha cut her off with their laughter. Levi crosses his arms in front of his chest, clearly amused at her discomfort.

"Ugh," she stands up irritatedly, crossing her arms in front of her. "You make it sound weird, I just learned my colors as a kid!"

Sasha and Connie calm down, Sasha even wiping a tear from her eye.

"I'm sorry, you're right, you're helpful, it's just funny seeing you get all worked up, it's just not like you."

She fumbles with the band she wears to cover the mark of her mother's family irritatedly, frowning all the while.

"My complexion aside," Levi says, glancing at Mikasa with an air of condescension that makes her want to punch him right in the face, "This is Fiona, she's a good horse."

Mikasa takes this as an opportunity.

"I can take Elise while you deal with all this horse stuff," she offers.

"Oh, thanks Mikasa," Sasha smiles and passes the baby over to her and leads Levi and the Springer family's new horse to their stable.

She goes inside the house and sets Elise on the ground, takes out some of her toys, and Mikasa watches her passively as she starts to chew on a toy horse.

 _Thank goodness._

One more minute of that and she was going to die of embarrassment; teased by Connie and Sasha, of all people in front of…Levi.

 _Whatever the hell he is to me._

He definitely wasn't her beau, the thought makes her feel completely uncomfortable. In her trashy romance novels that she hides in the bottom of her trunk, their relationship would be described as lovers and something about that sounds so silly that she can't even begin to think in terms of that.

 _He's just the guy I'm fucking._

That's probably the most accurate way she can describe it.

 _Yeah, the guy you're fucking that's your former commanding officer, that in the past you sometimes hated, and that you enjoy beating the shit out of who is fifteen years older than you._

Still, she can't regret what's happened because seeing him again a day later, she already feels that same pull, that same, inexplicable feeling. He represents something to her, if anything a return to something simpler, something intuitive that she can just do without thinking.

She doesn't need to think about her pain, her grief, about Eren, his rejection of her feelings, his death…none of it matters when she fights, because everything is instinctive. She doesn't have to think about it and there's nothing she needs more than that right now.

She'd also be lying to herself if she didn't admit that the way his forearms looked with his sleeves rolled up made her think about what it'd be like to have him lift her up and have her against a wall.

The thought surprises her. She's never been one to fantasize, to spend hours dreaming of things that could be. That was Armin, he was the dreamer.

Still, she can't help but wonder when next time will happen.

* * *

The series of events that lead Mikasa to Levi's bedroom four days after their last encounter are surprisingly mundane. Connie finishes the suit that he owed to Levi, and Mikasa, as casually as she could, offered to deliver it to him.

Very quickly, almost shockingly so, the two of them came to blows. And he was serious about not letting her win this time, she could tell he was determined to best her, to make her bend to his will and she almost feels slighted at how last time he'd allowed her to win.

The line between fighting and when she starts taking his clothes off is blurry; when they're stumbling into his house from outside, she still picks up a broomstick and swings it at his torso hard enough that it breaks in half, but then she pulls his t-shirt over his head and tries to push him up against a wall.

It remains a struggle, all the way until they're in what she assumes is his bedroom and he pushes her hard against the wall, his left hand squeezing her wrists together and pinning them above her head.

She struggles against him but she doesn't have the momentum to break free from his grasp.

"Let me go," she growls.

He presses his hips up against hers and she can feel his cock straining against his pants.

"Is that what you really want?" he breathes against her ear and bites her earlobe. It's so unexpected that she can't help but let out a whimper that she's sure she'll feel embarrassed about later.

"That's what I thought, so," he's pressing open-mouthed kisses down her throat and down her collarbone, "when I let go of your wrists, you're going to take of your dress, mm?"

His other hand squeezes her breast and she groans, but then she feels him pinch her nipple through the dress and she yelps.

"I asked you a question."

As a leader, Levi wasn't one to bark orders. He preferred to trust his subordinates to make their own independent decisions that were in the best interest of the group. But when he did give orders, they were authoritative and carried a weight that made it difficult to defy. Still, she'd defied him many times in the past. Submission is not in her nature, it's not who she is.

But she doesn't want him to stop, doesn't want to leave this perfect, easy way of existing. And even if it frightens her, there's a part of her that wants to have him tell her what to do; to let go, to submit herself to what he wants because after all, they are the same this way. They simply do what feels right.

Still, it takes all of her strength to quietly say "Yes."

"Yes what?"

"I'll take off my dress."

He lets go of her wrists and Mikasa feels the blood rush back into them as she flexes her hands to regain sensation back.

He sits down on the end of the bed and watches her. There is no trace of his normally present indifference but instead an intense, almost predatory gaze watches her as she slowly unbuttons the front of her dress.

 _Just because he told me to take off my dress doesn't mean I have to be quick about it._

So she doesn't let her eyes leave his, she stares right back at him as she undoes the sash and slowly steps out of her dress. It falls off of her shoulders into a green and white pool on the floor, leaving her in her underwear and stockings.

"Come here."

She walks toward him and slowly palms her stomach, like he's trying to catalogue every freckle, each ripple of muscle. He reaches behind her and unclasps her bra and pulls it off of her shoulders and onto the ground with her dress.

His mouth is on her breast, his tongue on her nipple and she bites her lip to prevent herself from making a sound. Very quickly, she feels him pinch her side and she yelps again.

"Don't do that, hold back any sounds you make, I can tell," he says sharply, then more gently, "I want to hear you."

Any sort of ill-formed sexual fantasies she'd had in her teens, any sexual encounter she'd had as an adult, all of it pales in comparison to how turned on she is by the fact that he wants to _hear_ her.

If he didn't have her before, he had her now. This feels right just like the last time when she'd had him on his knees in front of her, when he was her's to command. It's different, she's not the one in control, but there is a freedom, a kind of power in surrender that feels just as natural, though she hadn't seen that until now.

"Okay," she agrees.

"Good," he stands up and undoes his pants and she swallows when she sees him completely naked for the first time. It had been dark the first time, and he'd still had his shirt mostly on the whole time despite the fact that she'd ripped it.

"Get on your knees."

She knows what he probably expects, and hell, what she wants, but she waits for him to say something, wanting to know what he'll say.

"Have you done this before?"

She smiles softly and can't resist running her hand up the corded muscle of his thigh, letting her finger linger on the permanent divot made by decades of wearing 3DMG, only for him to sharply slap her hand away as if to say _who said you could touch?_

"Mm, right. So, have you done this before?" he repeats himself.

She can't resist the opportunity to play dumb here, maybe with the hope that he'll hit her again because something about mixing pain and pleasure speaks to her, because she's not sure if anyone can truly escape pain anyways, so why not embrace it?

"Done what before, Levi?"

"Oh so now you want to play the virgin," he laughs darkly, "Have you ever had a cock in your mouth?"

Hearing him say it like that, so direct, so vulgar makes her squeeze her thighs together, trying to relieve some of the tension she feels.

"No," she says honestly.

"Hmm, I'm sure you'll figure it out, you're a smart girl," he says dryly, threading a hand through her hair.

Being called a girl makes her bristle.

 _I'll show you how much of a girl I am._

With little difficulty, she has him gripping her hair tightly, his hips starting to jerk into her mouth as she runs her tongue and lips up and down his cock.

Something about this makes her feel she's the powerful one again, like she's able to reduce him to some baser, animal version of himself.

He pulls her away from him and she's sure it's because he doesn't want to come and she moans at the sensation of him tugging on her hair, the pain of it heightening her senses to that same, animal focus that she craves.

He doesn't ask anything of her this time, instead he shoves her onto the bed, on her stomach and he quickly pulls her panties down so they're around her knees.

She moans loudly when he's inside of her, not expecting him so quickly, not expecting it to feel so differently from this angle.

"Fuck, did you get this wet sucking cock? I didn't peg you for a cockslut."

Anger floods her at the insult despite the fact that some part of her enjoys it.

"Fuck you," she growls and pushes herself against him.

He grabs her hair again and yanks, then he slaps her hard with an open palm on her ass, making her shout.

"Don't get mad at me for speaking the truth," he says. "Besides, if you haven't noticed we are fucking right now."

He picks up the pace and it's harder, more punishing than before but something about it feels so good.

"Touch yourself," he demands, this time his voice sounds a little more breathless, like he's starting to unravel.

She does what he says without thinking and it feels different with him inside than it does by herself and so much better.

For a minute, she's reduced only to the things she can feel, his hand in her hair, his cock inside of her, her fingers rubbing herself in tight circles and it's all too much and she's gripping the quilt and crying out as he thrusts into her through her orgasm.

She doesn't know if it's a minute or five before he groans and collapses on top of her, his chest slick with sweat, his breath quick and hot on her neck.

She presses her head back into a pillow and stretches her arms above her head, closing her eyes tightly and just lets herself enjoy that boneless, relaxed feeling.

He's apparently doing the same thing because she can hear him breathing. She feela the bed dip next to her.

After a minute, she sighs and gets off the bed. She's still wearing her knee high stockings and underwear, so she's sure she's an interesting sight to behold; topless and disheveled, but she doesn't particularly care.

She grabs her clutch and takes out a cigarette.

"You want one?" she asks.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.

"Fine."

So she lights her own with a match and then lights his with the tip of her own. She grabs a saucer from the bedside table that she assumes he'd used to have his morning coffee for them to flick their ashes on and sets it between them.

He's put his boxers back on, so they're both just sitting there, topless on the bed smoking cigarettes.

"You're a bad influence on me, I hadn't touched one of these since I was a teenager."

She exhales smoke.

"Sorry," she says tonelessly.

"For some reason I think you're less than sincere."

"Smart man," she drawls, flicking the ash of her cigarette boredly onto the saucer.

When she's finished her cigarette, she extinguishes it on the saucer.

She glances over at him, shirtless and relaxed and is shocked she finds him handsome to a degree that almost irritates her. She'd never found him particularly attractive before, but now, all she wants is to go back to bed, pin him down and map every bit of his torso with her mouth.

She sees the welt on his obliques caused by the broomstick she'd hit him with and can't help it when she reaches out and traces the mark with her fingertip.

He winces, likely just out of surprise, his muscle twitching beneath her fingertip.

"Admiring your handywork?"

She doesn't answer him, instead placing her hand flat on his side, smoothing her hand over his obliques, noting how it feels when the muscles tense at her touch.

She glances up at him and meets his eyes, his gaze observant.

"Do you want to see me again?" she asks softly.

She doesn't know why, but for some reason it seems important that she asks. She wants to know if this is going to continue, with some element of consistency or if she needs to find something else to occupy her time.

He places a hand over her's, and she notes that it's probably the first time he's ever touched her so gently.

He looks away from her when he replies.

"Yeah."


	3. Chapter 3

As a teen, Mikasa hadn't thought much about sex.

Life had been so difficult. Initially, the constant fear of Eren dying, of losing him to the titans had been her only guide, the only way she could move forward, her mission.

Still, late at night, in the moments between waking and sleep, she would put her hand between her legs and touch herself, if anything for that brief reprieve from reality that she so seldom sought but needed all the same.

When she had, her thoughts had always been disjointed, more sensory than anything, and they always involved Eren. She'd think about what it'd be like to have him kiss her, really kiss her, for hours. What it'd be like to have him run his hands through her hair tenderly, his tan hand caressing her cheek, making love with him in the early morning while the sun peeked in through their bedroom window and their children were still sleeping.

When she'd realized that Eren had never and would never want that with her, it'd been so devastating. She'd wanted to share everything with him, to be there for him until the day she drew her last breath…

But she was still breathing, and he was gone.

She still doesn't know which is worse: the pain of his absence or the sting of his rejection. And it makes her feel ashamed, ashamed that she can even compare losing him to something as petty as him not wanting her, but she does. She feels it every single day, the pain of unrequited love.

When she'd slept with Jean, it had felt like some kind of strange parody of what she'd imagined with Eren. He was an easy person to read, and even half-drunk she could see what he felt for her. Still, she'd let him love her because in the moment it'd felt better than the crushing numbness of being alone.

She's been carrying on with Levi for a little over a month now. She tells Sasha and Connie that he asked her for extra help on the farm and that she's bored; that Hanji wants them to write down personal accounts from their lives for her research.

Both of these things are true, in some sense. She does help him with chores here and there, if anything because the amount of work running a horse sanctuary for surly ex war-horses is a full-time undertaking, and Hanji has called them (Levi begrudgingly acquired a telephone at Hanji's behest), asking the both of them to write about the times that they had felt "Any of that crazy Acker-power you both spoke about."

She can't really be truthful, because lately she feels it – that power, the strength, deep down within her that compels her to do what she must – when she's with him.

She has a memory from her childhood of seeing a Wallist priest performing a ritual near Wall Maria – his eyes glazed over, body rocking back and forth as he chanted blessings in what sounded like a foreign tongue – it was completely trance like, as if his body had been moving on its own, like he was actually communing with something outside of himself and his body was just an instrument of that something else's will. Eren had thought it was freaky while Armin had thought it was fascinating. Though she hadn't said anything to either of them, she had recalled a time when she had felt that way, a time when her body had moved of its own accord.

That's how it is now, between the two of them. It all started out like some sort of grandiose exercise, the sex really just an extension of whatever ongoing physical battle they were fighting. Win, lose, it doesn't matter. She likes telling him what to do as much as she likes him telling her what to do. In the last week though their roles have become less defined. Sex has become more of a give and take, a push and pull that reminds MIkasa of the ocean waves all those years ago.

"Do that again," she pants after he traces the shell of her ear with his tongue while he moves two of his fingers inside of her.

She swears she feels him smile before he obliges her.

"Ah!" She clutches at his arms tightly.

Now he actually chuckles.

"Shut up," she hisses, this time digging her nails into whatever part of him she can grab. She's learned he actually likes that.

Still, he has started to move his hand with more purpose. She can tell when he gets serious about making her come because he knows how to get her off – fast circles, curled fingers, and if he's really trying, he'll whisper dirty things in her ear.

"What has you all worked up like this, makes you seem desperate," he teases. "Are you feeling desperate?"

He moves his finger just so and she can't help but jerk against his hand and sigh.

"Just say it, say what you want."

There it is. She's noticed this similarity between the two of them; that both of them have a strong desire to be wanted by someone else. She thinks it has something to do with the fact that the two of them had been so essential to humanity's survival, him for well over a decade, that not having a clearly defined part to play feels like drowning.

She still has her pride, so if he wants her to ask then he's going to have to work for it.

"Make me come, then you can fuck me," she says lowly while she runs her fingertips along his scalp.

He was right about her being wound up because she comes faster than normal. Maybe it's the hot weather or the fact that his normally pale skin has started to tan a little from a summer of doing chores outside and that when she came over she'd caught him with his shirt off at the water pump, uncharacteristically dirty and disheveled after riding the horses that morning.

"Now, I want you _now_ ," she breathes, not quite sure if she's demanding or pleading.

He pins her down on the bed and the feeling of him inside her while she's still coming is indescribable, inescapable, like for a short span of time nothing else has to exist.

"Harder," she wraps her leg around him, digging her heel into his lower back and she hears him growl.

 _That face._

He's clenching his jaw and sweat is beading on his temple. His eyes reflect that same animal quality she feels inside of herself – that uncontrollable, volatile, perfect feeling of knowing you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing in that moment. It's terrifying and thrilling all at once.

He holds himself up on his forearm and she watches as he reaches down and starts to touch her again, still continuing the steady pace that she likes.

"What are you–"

But she's cut off when she feels that familiar, pleasurable tugging in her stomach that makes her gasp and clench her hands into fists.

It takes longer, and she can see him biting the inside of his cheek so he doesn't finish. Still, he knows how she likes to be touched and watching him move above her, all solid muscle, dark hair and light colored eyes has her crying out his name in a way that would've embarrassed her a month ago. He speeds up and is quick to finish – he's quiet, but she can tell by his face and how his abdominal muscles tense.

She doesn't know exactly why, but instead of letting him roll off of her and onto the bed, she pulls him down and kisses him on the mouth.

They've never kissed before, she'd never felt compelled to but something about it feels right because she wants it, and if there is any rule between the two of them it's to do what feels right and what feels good. If he's surprised she can't tell because his hand is in her hair, his other on her waist and he's kissing her back just as fervently. She smooths her hands over the striated muscles on his shoulders and it makes her pulse quicken.

 _I've never wanted someone like this._

That's when she feels it in her chest, a gripping panic that makes her freeze up.

He quickly pulls away.

"What's wrong?"

But she can't speak, and she needs to be away from him _now_ so she roughly pushes him off of her and grabs the light robe that she'd started keeping at his house, putting it on and tying it tightly around her waist while her hands shake.

He's watching her like she's a spooked horse, appraisingly but keeping his distance.

"What's wrong?" he asks again and she just shakes her head.

"I need to leave." she manages.

She grabs her earlier discarded bra and her simple pink dress with buttons all the way down to the hemline and puts them both on. She leaves as quickly as she can, sure that she imagined the look of concern on his face.

* * *

Mikasa has been promoted to sewing buttons for Connie. She also has started embroidering handkerchiefs for them to sell because she feels like she should at least do something to earn her keep. Sasha and Connie have made it abundantly clear that she's welcome for as long as she wants, but Mikasa can't accept being a burden.

"This is so pretty Mikasa, far too pretty for a baby," Sasha says looking at the edge of a tiny dress Mikasa embroidered with flowers and bunny rabbits.

"Not for _this_ baby though," Mikasa says in that sing-song voice that everyone uses with babies, picking her up and kissing her on her cheek. Elise screeches in delight at the attention. "She's the sweetest, prettiest baby around, yes you are," she says, holding her close.

"Seriously though, you're really good at this, I've never seen anything like it," Sasha says, examining the design closely.

Mikasa remembers when she was a little girl spending plenty of afternoons with her mother, learning to stitch fabric "the way our people have for generations."

Mikasa knows now that there are other people like her, other Orientals, even meeting a group of them after the war had concluded.

Still, she'd felt like just as much of an outsider around them as she had growing up because she was only half. They spoke a language she didn't understand and dressed differently than she was used to, though the food reminded her of things her mom had made, which made her miss her.

"It's something people of Asia do, my mother taught me," she says.

Sasha's eyes go wide and bright. "Wow, that's so special Mikasa," she smiles warmly at her, but then frowns.

"Speaking of parents, my father hasn't seen Elise since she was a newborn and he visited, so tomorrow we're going to go and visit him. We'll be away for about five days. I'd say you can come with, but you really don't want to, my dad is…" Sasha sighs. "He can be difficult."

Connie walks in then and groans. "Difficult is putting it nicely," he kisses Sasha on the cheek before he goes and grabs a hunk of bread off the kitchen counter and shoves it in his mouth.

"That's okay, I can take care of things around here while you're gone, Connie if you have work you want me to do just show me."

"Nothing too much, we're actually pretty ahead on things thanks to you," Connie says, his mouth full of the bread Sasha took out of the oven about fifteen minutes ago.

She doesn't think much of it when they tell her they'll be leaving for a while, but seeing them get picked up by a driver and go away is something else entirely.

Mikasa hasn't been truly alone, as in no other people around whatsoever, for a very long time. She always had Eren, and then the Survey Corps, and even after that the city had been at least busy with people, she didn't feel isolated. But this was different. She's alone in the forest with only herself and some farm animals for company.

After she has completed the relatively short list of chores they've left her, she doesn't know what to do with herself.

She hasn't seen Levi for a week.

She's felt that crippling, hazy, numb feeling creeping back for the last few days, but she's kept it at bay by talking with Sasha, sewing with Connie and helping care for the baby. With them gone, she feels it again, creeping into her chest, settling into her bones. When night falls it's back in full force.

Whatever is happening between the two of them, whatever feeling she'd had when she'd kissed him, it's so far from the things she'd imagined with Eren. She hasn't wanted anyone since Eren because wanting things you can't have hurts, and wanting a fantasy hurts even more.

The way that Levi touches her, the way he kisses her, it's all so real that it's starting to scare her. Make her afraid of being vulnerable, afraid of losing the part of her that belongs to a dead man, because so much of her still belongs to Eren. Can she want someone else without losing him? Because she doesn't know if she ever wants to stop mourning Eren, stop missing him, stop needing him, because if she does then he's truly gone to her.

But maybe that's why she's been carrying on this whole thing with Levi. When he touches her it's the sweetest way to forget and simultaneously remember. Remember what life is supposed to feel like, remember what clarity feels like and forget grief, confusion and pain.

She can tell it's the same for him. Sometimes, she wonders what he is trying to forget, wonders what he is trying to remember.

These thoughts consume her until the sun starts to rise and she finally succumbs to her exhaustion, clutching her red scarf.

When she wakes up, she can tell she only slept for a few hours because the sun isn't that high in the sky, it's still morning.

 _Fuck._

The empty house, the sound of the animals outside, it's starting to make her go crazy, and she's still exhausted.

So she goes outside, wraps a quilt around a tree and starts punching it until her knuckles crack and bruise purple. Then she takes all of the knives out of the kitchen and sharpens them until they'd split a hair.

By sunset of the second day, she feels so, so, tired but knows that she wouldn't be able to sleep. So, she decides to give up on functioning in an even remotely acceptable way and grabs a bottle of wine from the cellar, drinking it from the bottle while she chain smokes the remainder of her cigarettes on the front porch.

She's finished half the bottle and she starts thinking about Hannes, that damn red faced drunk who literally couldn't kill a titan to save his life.

 _And here I am, alive and well._

Well, she has a pulse at least, better than plenty of others, she supposes. She's drunk enough that she can think thoughts she normally wouldn't, thoughts she'd normally stop before they got out of hand.

She misses Levi. Misses the thrill of fighting him and what it's like to have his body pressed up against hers afterwards.

Even worse, she misses things about him that she didn't even know that she noticed, like the smell of his soap, how his hair feels when he's just given it a trim, how he looks when he's taken off his suit jacket, what he looks like when he's just finished doing chores and he smells like sweat and hay.

Mikasa's never missed anyone who was still alive.

 _Alive, and not far._

And it's for that reason, and perhaps the fact that she's barely slept in a twenty-four hour period that she clumsily saddles up the horse Fiona (she's not that far gone), and rides over to his house.

When she gets there and she sees a light on inside.

She all but falls off the horse, her foot catches in the stirrup and she hops awkwardly so she doesn't fall. Still, she manages to tie the horse to a pole.

"Good horse," she says, patting her on the side and closing her eyes for a second. She nearly collapses on the ground right there.

 _I need to sleep._

Honestly, even being near the house where she knows another living human person dwells is already soothing her. Despite the hot summer evening, she's still wearing her red scarf loosely around her neck because she needs it right now.

She's clearly not being quiet, because she hears a thump sound and sees a knife wedged into the oak tree three feet to her left.

"Alright, show yourself and I'll decide if I feel like mortally wounding or just maiming."

She nearly laughs at this because he sounds so pissed off. It reminds her of all those years ago when Jean and Eren would get into a fight and he'd break it up, grumbling the whole time about how he hated babysitting.

She steps out from outside the horse and sees him squint.

"Mikasa?"

There are a million things she wants to say, that she's tired and alone and can't stand it anymore, but all she manages is: "Hey."

She takes a step forward and trips on the root of a tree.

"Are you drunk?"

"No!"

He crosses his arms and looks at her boredly.

"Yes, fine, I've been drinking," she admits. "Can I sleep here?"

Something she doesn't recognize flashes across his face, but it's gone before she can think about it. He sighs.

"Yeah, sure," he says evenly.

She's so glad he doesn't ask any questions because she really doesn't want to explain anything, can't explain that she needed to not be alone.

"You can sleep on the bed, I don't use it," he says shortly, but she's already pulling down the quilt and tucking herself in. She takes off her scarf, wraps it around her hand and clutches it to her chest.

She says goodnight to him and falls asleep with the light still on.

* * *

She wakes up and she can tell that it's mid-morning. Her head doesn't hurt and for that she's thankful because she normally has awful hangovers.

 _For a bed that never gets slept in, it's fairly comfortable._

Well, it gets used for other things.

Even the most fleeting thought of those other things makes her squeeze her legs together and shift her weight.

Levi must be downstairs because she can hear someone rifling around in a cupboard. She looks to the foot of the bed and sees that her robe is there, folded neatly into a perfect square.

The gesture surprises her, because in all honesty she doesn't deserve any kindness from him. After all, the last time she was here she'd stormed out in a panic and returned a week later drunk and asking for a place to sleep.

She heads down the narrow staircase, ducking her head to avoid the door frame, and sees him on his hands and knees, scrubbing the stone tiles in the kitchen.

"Do you want help?"

He shakes his head.

"No, I have to do it or it makes me irritated," he says simply. "There's hot water in the kettle on the stove and tea in the pantry, second shelf and to the left.

"Thanks."

She goes into the pantry and grabs the tea canister, but not before noticing that there's nothing on the top shelf and smiling.

 _Shorty can't reach the top shelf._

If she were in a more mischievous mood she'd probably put the tea up there, but considering he put up with her being drunk and pathetic last night, she thinks better of it.

 _Maybe I should get him a step-stool._

She pours hot water into a brown clay mug and sits at the kitchen table while her tea steeps. He's scrubbing the already pristine looking tiles with an intense focus that she can't help but find a little unsettling, though she's not surprised.

"Are you sure I can't help? It feels weird to just sit here and watch you."

He sighs and gets up off his hands.

"I can take a break."

He grabs himself a tea cup and sits across from her, waiting for his to be done steeping.

She feels an unusual awkwardness between the two of them. They don't talk much, but normally she that's comfortable.

"About last night —"

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"What?"

She's surprised. If she recalls correctly, she showed up last night drunk in her pajamas. Usually that kind of thing makes people want some sort of explanation.

"I'm just saying you don't owe me an explanation."

Jean used to try and get her to talk all the time. He'd just ask "how are you?" but it always made her feel like he expected her to be this nervous wreck and open up about every single thing that'd ever happened to her.

 _He wasn't really wrong about me though._

Still, it had bothered her, the way he felt entitled to know her secrets, to know what kept her up at night.

She can tell Levi is serious, that he's not going to press her on the matter and it's for that reason she feels more compelled to explain herself.

She crosses her legs and looks away from him because it's still difficult to say.

"Sasha and Connie went to visit her dad and I can't sleep without other people nearby," she says quickly.

It feels good to say aloud to someone else because it's been so long since she has confided in anyone about anything, even trivial. It's not in her nature to let other people worry about her.

His expression is as unreadable to her as it always is. It's funny how there are parts of him she understands so well that it's like looking at herself and other things that are so strange she can't even make a guess as to what he's thinking.

He takes the tea bag out of his cup and takes a drink, holding it in his normal strange way that she remembers, and quickly sets it down.

"Too hot," he says shaking his head slightly.

She looks at him and takes a sip of her own. It burns so badly she spits it out into her cup.

"I told you! Too hot!"

"I wanted to see if you were just being a wimp."

He glares, but then she laughs and he can't keep a straight face, then they're both laughing, quietly at first then hard enough that Mikasa clutches at her stomach and throws her head back.

"I've never met anyone as stubborn as you," he says, a small smile on his face.

"As if you're any better," she deadpans.

He doesn't disagree with her.

"Anything you want to do today?"

She shrugs. "Do you want to fight?"

He sighs and looks away with that same bored, slightly irritated face that she'd found so irritating when she was younger.

"Do you mean fight and then end up screwing? Because honestly Erwin's asshole horse kicked me in the side a few days ago and I'm not sure I'm up to having the shit kicked out of me if you really just want to fuck."

Mikasa feels herself turn so red that she thinks she might faint and he starts laughing again at how obviously embarrassed she is. She can only think of one or two times they had just fought each other without ending up naked.

"Shut up!"

He just laughs harder but stops, wincing and clutching his side.

"Hey, let me see," she says, her embarrassment fading to concern.

"It's not that serious," he argues, but she gets up and starts unbuttoning his shirt anyways, so he resigns himself to her examination.

She frowns when she sees the large, hoof shaped bruise on his side. It's dark purple, larger than her hand and yellows at the edges that fan over his ribs.

"This is pretty bad, how do you know your ribs aren't broken?"

"It doesn't hurt that much."

When she presses firmly against it he winces and swats her hand away.

"Doesn't hurt, right?" she says sarcastically.

"Yeah, it doesn't hurt when I don't fucking press on it like a fucking sadist," he says irritatedly.

"Oh you're calling me a sadist, is that right?"

He puts his hand on her waist and quickly pulls her down into his lap.

"You don't normally complain," he says as he runs his hand up the curve of her side, "in fact I'm pretty sure I always get you off."

His words quicken her pulse and make her mouth go dry. It's only been a week but that's far too long. So she moves her leg so she's straddling him and grinds her hips against his, enjoying the thrill that shoots through her body when he shuts his eyes and moans lowly at the friction.

She takes no time in undoing his pants and pulling them off. She grabs his half-hard cock firmly, pumping a few times until she can feel him throbbing in her hand and pushing against her.

He's so attractive like this–shirt unbuttoned, eyes shut, dark hair and strong hands, and all she wants is to kiss him again, press her mouth against his and then the rest of her body until there's nothing separating them and she can forget that anything else exists. She hesitates because she remembers the last time, but throws caution to the wind because it's what feels right and that's all she needs; for things to be easy, to do things that feel good for the sake of pleasure and pleasure alone.

And it is right because nothing wrong can feel as good as this does.

She can tell he's surprised because he hesitates for a moment, but then his tongue is in her mouth, his teeth are pulling on her bottom lip and his hands are tight on her hips.

She rolls her hips against his again and he lets out a sigh of frustration against her mouth. She's still surprised when he grips her by the thighs, stands up, pushes her against the wall and wraps her legs around his waist.

"Ah!"

But he's back to kissing her, on the mouth, down her throat, everywhere he can reach. She wraps her arms tightly around him and lets her head fall backwards, baring more of her neck to him. He's rucked her nightgown up to her waist and then he's fucking her up against the wall, hard movements with a steady rhythm just like she likes. She gasps and cards her fingers through his hair, loving the heat of his breath on her neck, his hands gripping her tightly.

He finishes before she does, his breath ragged, hands clenched on her hips. She can't help but feel disappointed because she's so wound up if she doesn't get relief she may weep. Her disappointment is momentary because he sets her down and immediately replaces his cock with his fingers, pushing in and out of her until she's clawing at his back and begging for him to make her come.

"I'm so close, _please._ "

She doesn't even care how it sounds because she's missed this, wanted him for the last week and it's too good for her to keep quiet.

"I like it when you're like this, uninhibited, it's beautiful," He curls his fingers and when she closes her eyes she sees stars and light, her whole body tensing up as she clutches the back of his shirt and cries out nonsense as she's overcome by the pleasure of it all.

She feels like her heart is going to pound out of her chest, like her ribs can't expand enough for her to take in enough air, like she's falling through the air but will never hit the ground. She leans down and kisses him, grabbing his shirt roughly and pulling him to her. He reaches under her nightgown and grabs at her small breasts, his other hand resting on her stomach tracing lazy circles.

She doesn't think she could come again, but she doesn't want to stop touching him, doesn't want to stop tasting him because it makes her feel good to know him, good to feel him. So wordlessly she grabs his hand and takes him upstairs to the bedroom with the bed he never sleeps on and pulls him onto the unmade sheets. She touches him with her hands and mouth, everywhere she feels like, leaving the too hot tea to cool on the kitchen table.

They lay there until the morning fades to afternoon and something is just different. That same feeling she always wanted, that feeling of being alive, that thrill, that confidence in her actions that normally fades until they're together again, it stays with her. It settles into her chest, into her bones and it doesn't dissipate.

She helps him with the daily chores. The summer heat is oppressive, to the point that they sweat so much that their clothes stick to their bodies and the horses need to be cooled with buckets of water from the pump, so for dinner they just eat melon and brown bread that Sasha baked with honey.

They're sticky with sweat and dirty from chores, so they hose off the grime outside then fill up his bathtub with lukewarm water and hop in together, scrubbing themselves down with bar soap that smells like lemongrass.

He runs his hands up her calf absentmindedly, even pressing a kiss to the inside of her ankle.

"That bruise is pretty awful, have you put a compress on it?"

"It's fine," he insists.

"That horse is nasty, I saw where he bit Sasha."

He snorts. "Of course he's an asshole, he was bred to run from Titans while crazy fucks like us fly around and now he sits in a stable and eats grass."

Mikasa can't help but think it'd be kinder to put the animal down.

"I can tell what you're thinking," he says dryly, still absent-mindedly tracing patterns on her leg. "That horse saved the life of the greatest man I've ever known multiple times over. The least I can do is give him a place to eat grass and die of old age," he pauses and makes eye contact with her, "besides, from the things Hanji says, killing the horse wouldn't be much different than if you and I had been taken out back and shot after all the Titans were gone."

Her eyes widen slightly and she sits up a little more, water splashing out of the tub.

"What has she said?"

"Sciencey bullshit I don't really understand. She can be hard to follow when she gets excited, but from what I gathered there's something weird in the blood sample she took from you when you tried to kill me compared to before. She's still writing about it and drawing conclusions but it was exciting enough to keep her up for two days straight."

If there's something she likes about Levi it's how he can casually refer to a time where she had tried to kill him and not be upset by it.

"But what does that mean?"

He shrugs and glances away from her.

"Probably that generations back the Ackerman family line was manipulated, not unlike breeding horses for desirable traits, to possess a certain skill-set. I wouldn't be surprised if experimentation of some kind was involved either, that's what Hanji seemed to imply."

Something about this just seems so strange, that the two of them are possibly the end result of something so deliberate.

"When I was a cadet, Annie called me a monster. I didn't think much of it back then, she never liked me, but now I wonder if she knew something. Something from where she was from about us."

"It's not impossible. Here we were ostracized from regular society for our abilities, my mother and her family in the Underground City, your father probably fleeing persecution with your mother…it makes sense that they were together, two outsiders like them," he pauses for a moment, letting the thought hang in the air with the unspoken words between them both.

 _Two outsiders like us._

Because that's what this has been about. The two of them looking for something they can't find anywhere else.

She can't help but admire his profile, from his strong jawline to his dark eyelashes, it makes her want to lean over and kiss him, smooth her hand over his cheek and rest her head on his chest.

So she decides that's what she's going to do. She moves over by him, resting her body up against his and she pulls his arm around her, letting their legs tangle up in the water.

How many choices have led them here? The last of a dying line of people, a girl-turned-woman worth a hundred soldiers and a man worth a brigade, tired, lonely and obsolete in an era far kinder than either of them have ever experienced.

For the first time, she feels like she can understand something of what Eren and Armin had together – an understanding of the burden they both shouldered, the sacrifices they made, the demons that haunted them.

Now that she's experienced it – this understanding where words aren't needed, what it's like having someone else just knows what you feel – she can understand why Eren had wanted that, even if it still hurts her.

After a few minutes of sitting quietly, they decide to towel off and go outside. She puts on one of his sleeveless undershirts and a pair of drawstring shorts because her nightgown is dirty and they didn't do laundry today.

"Do you still want to fight? I can go as long as you don't start doing crazy shit like breaking chair legs and swinging them at me."

She snorts.

"Oh so now we have rules when we fight, I see how it is," she teases.

He glares. "You were the one all worried about this bruise, now you're pissy that I don't want you to break apart my furniture."

"It's fine, I understand, you _are_ getting older, it must be hard keeping up with a young woman like me."

She sees him frown even more and she laughs.

"Fine, I won't break anything, but I'm not going to go too easy, otherwise we'll both get soft."

They fight, but it feels different. Instead of grief, anger, and fear fueling her every move, she can't help but think that for once it just feels nice. The way he moves always surprises her because he's unpredictable. Most people fall into patterns; certain techniques, movements, that make them vulnerable, and she has always been attuned to these patterns. He has nothing like that. Instead, everything seems so organic, so natural to the situation that it's like he reinvents his style for every situation.

The sun sets and the stars come out, so they mutually agree that no one is going to win (because neither of them really wants to) so they sit down in the grass.

Mikasa looks up at the sky, trying to remember all the things Armin would ramble about constellations and the stories that Eren would make up to accompany them. They were completely wrong and ridiculous, but she'd loved listening to them anyways.

It's still a hot and muggy summer night that even darkness doesn't fully dispel, but there's something about it – the chirping crickets, the wind in the trees, the frogs in the nearby pond – that make it feel so calm, so peaceful, that she feels younger than she has in a long time.

They lay there, side by side on a grassy hill, looking up at the sky.

"You thought about Eren, the other day," he says noncommittally.

Hearing Eren's name said aloud is strange. She feels like anyone she knows has put some sort of taboo on it around her, like she's going to fly off into some sort of episode at just the mention of him. They're probably right, because her initial reaction to his question is to tell him it's none of his business what she does or does not think.

But she knows that's not true, and that she owes it to him, and whatever it is developing between them, to answer.

"Yes, I did."

She stays looking at the stars, because it's easier to talk if she doesn't look at him.

"That's okay. That you think about him."

She looks over at him, his forearm resting against his knee while he looks up.

"I'm surprised you say that," she says quietly.

"Why?"

"Everyone acts like I should just wake up one day and be happy, that I should just forget about…everything," she finishes lamely.

"Most people don't ever love someone the way you loved him," he says simply.

To hear him say that like it's the most obvious thing in the world almost makes her blush, which is stupid all things considered.

"You make me sound like a much better person than I am, the way you say that," she starts pulling at the grass and throwing it aside distractedly.

He shrugs. "Good, bad, it's all relative."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I just mean that there's no point looking back. There's no point in regretting something you feel. You can't change it and just telling yourself to get over it doesn't work. Accept yourself for who you are because it's the only thing you have control over," he glances over at her, "even people like us, we aren't immune to these things."

 _People like us._

Something about hearing it that way makes her shiver. He thinks about them the same way she does. It confirms everything she's been feeling the last month, everything she's been looking for. That she's not imagining the understanding that they have, the feelings between them.

She's spent years ruled by her feelings, wishing every single day that she'd had even a day, an hour, a minute where Eren had wanted her the way she wanted him.

It's nice to want someone and have them want her the same way, to receive the same feelings in return.

She's always tried her best not to feel, and has always failed miserably. She thinks perhaps this denial is ingrained in her, that she'll never fully accept things as they are until it's too late.

"You were partially right."

"About what?"

"The day we fought for Hanji, what you said to me."

He scoffs. "I said that because Hanji told me to make you want to kill me, it was just bullshit I knew would get under your skin."

She shakes her head.

"No, but you're right that he only looked at me like family, he–" she takes a breath, she's never actually talked about this with anyone, though she's sure people have speculated. "I confessed my feelings to him before he died, told him about how all I'd ever dreamed of was a world he was safe where we'd have a family and a house with neighbors we complained about, everything. And he just looked at me like he was confused, like I was speaking nonsense."

She shakes her head and sighs. It's so silly that after everything she's been through – watching her parents get murdered in front of her, seeing Carla devoured by the smiling titan, countless others dying around her in the Scouting Legion and this is what is consuming her thoughts.

"Then it all fell into place. When Eren was sick, I went out to go get something, I forget what, and I came back inside and I saw him and Armin. They weren't…together," she emphasizes , "but Armin was just holding him, and I could just tell. The way they looked at each other, I felt so stupid not seeing it before. They didn't know I was there, so I went back outside and made a bunch of noise so they'd know I was coming back."

She's not quite sure why she's telling him all of this, but she keeps going because it feels good to have someone else just listen to her for once, instead of telling her that she's wrong, that maybe she's just taking it the wrong way or how lucky she is to be alive after everything.

"And here's the fucked up part," she closes her eyes tightly, feeling tears stinging as she laughs, "I'm more upset that he didn't love me back than I am about him being dead. If he had wanted me, then died, I know I'd at least be content with having been with him, had something. Instead, I'm sitting here years later, selfish and moping about how he found happiness, after everything he'd done for humanity and everything he'd been through, with someone else before he died."

She's not sure if she finds it funny or heartbreaking, so she's laughing and crying. Laughing at how stupid she feels for feeling this way and crying because she hates that she feels this way, hates that she's such a selfish person.

When he reaches over and grabs her hand, she jumps in surprise.

"Of course you feel that way. It'd be stranger if you weren't jealous, no one is that good, no one with any real emotions anyways."

She looks at his hand covering hers, feels the roughness of his palm and the softness of the grass.

"But you keep saying that he only saw you as family. Why is that less significant than whatever he felt towards Armin?" He looks at her seriously and she must look confused.

"Think of it like this. Do you love me?"

Her eyes widen, pulse quickens, and she gets that feeling in her stomach like she's missed the last step on the staircase.

"What? I–"

"See that's my point. You and I, it's nice. Great, even. Something about it just works."

She doesn't know how he says it so nonchalantly because this is the first time either of them has put words to their relationship, and the thought alone makes her feel warm. Still, she knows exactly what he's talking about. Things between them just work, and that has been the appeal to her this whole time, because she'd been sick of nothing working.

"But that doesn't diminish your feelings for Eren. So why would him being with someone else mean that he felt less for you? That he loved you any less?"

She'd never thought of it that way. Why did she emphasize romantic love over all others? It's not as if Eren hadn't cared for her, hadn't held her when she cried, hadn't saved her life and taken care of her when she needed it.

"As difficult as it can be to accept, human emotions are complex. We're capable of so much more than we were reduced to – survival, fighting like some sort of animal," he looks over to her, his expression serious, "it's not a way to live."

At his words, it's as though something inside of her falls into place. All these years she's thought that survival was the goal, the highest calling. The greatest thing she could possibly do was to survive. Survive another day to protect Eren, survive another day to remember Eren…but truly, it had been just that, the survival, the bare minimum, a beating heart and an iron-clad will.

But that cocktail of grief and stubbornness just hasn't been enough the last year. Not anymore, and she's been searching, trying, hoping, dreaming that she would find something else with no idea what something else was.

She reaches for him and pulls his mouth down to hers, burying her fingers in his dark hair with one hand and her other on his cheek.

She presses her tongue at the seam of his lips and she groans at how good it is to taste him, feel his hands on her body, how shockingly, beautifully, clear all of it is.

He gives her everything she's ever wanted in a moment, to feel hopelessly, wonderfully, wanted by another person. She feels it in his touch, in his breath, in his kiss. He lingers on every part of her body, from the swell of her breast to the inside of her wrist, then between her legs where he makes her shout out his name until she thinks her voice will go hoarse.

He moves inside of her and she swears that him moving above her, equal parts tension and fluidity, is one of the most beautiful things she's ever seen.

They stay there for over an hour, wrapped up in each other, talking about everything from the way Eren would press his cold feet up against her legs in the winter when they'd shared a bed as children to his adoptive younger sister and how she'd snort like a pig to signal that a member of the Military Police was near and that the first time she did it he nearly lost his composure and gotten himself arrested.

Underneath this summer night sky she swears that for the first time in years she feels wonderfully, painfully alive.


	4. Chapter 4

Mikasa wakes up in the middle of the night and quickly realizes she has to pee.

So she rolls out of bed and tries not to run into anything because she's not used to being in this room at night yet.

Still, she notices that the armchair in the corner Levi normally sleeps on is vacant.

This doesn't shock her because she knows that he has always struggled with sleep. She's honestly surprised that she doesn't struggle more than she does. But she listens, and she can hear talking downstairs, and while she knows that Levi has his quirks, talking to himself simply isn't one of them.

The bathroom is right at the end of the stairs and to the left. The steps are old and creek, no matter how lightly she treads he'll hear her.

So she walks down the stairs and sees Levi sitting on a chair in the living room with the telephone. He glances at her as she goes into the bathroom but doesn't linger.

"I'm only going to be annoyed if you apologize again, I told you to call me if you needed to."

…

"Yeah, I still think about it."

…

"I wouldn't blame you if you were still angry at me."

…

"Why don't you go mess around with your plants if you need to do something?"

…

"Yeah that's a better idea, good."

 _Who the hell is he talking to?_

She's done peeing but she has no intention of leaving the bathroom because like it or not she's curious about the conversation he's having in the middle of the night.

He scoffs and she can practically see how he would roll his eyes.

"No, of course I'm not."

…

"She's in the bathroom right now."

She gets a little warm at the fact that he mentioned her. Has to be someone they both know, so if she had to guess she'd say it's Hanji he's talking to. But at this hour?

"I'm not going to tell her hi from you, she's probably half asleep, the woman sleeps like the dead, I'm jealous."

He pauses presumably for a response, then chuckles again.

 _You underestimate my interest in eavesdropping, Levi._

"Why don't you call her and ask her yourself?"

…

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure, go play with your stupid plants or get some sleep."

…

"You too."

She hears him hang up the phone, and it's then that she realizes she's spent way too much time in the bathroom and he'll definitely know she was eavesdropping.

So she washes her hands and jumps when she finds him standing outside the bathroom door.

"I was starting to worry you'd fallen in," he says dryly.

"I fell asleep."

"Right," he says clearly not believing her, but she can tell he doesn't care. He crosses his arms in a way that still makes her feel like she's about to be reprimanded, an odd side effect of being his subordinate for years.

"Hanji gets strange at night sometimes."

"She's not strange during the day?"

He shakes his head slightly. "Not like her usual. She'll do things like pull out all her fingernails to see if her diet is affecting their transparency if she gets upset about something, usually Erwin."

It's been over ten years since Erwin died, and even though Mikasa knows that time doesn't always heal wounds she's a little surprised.

"Were they…?"

Levi shrugs, her implication clear.

"I know she loved him, just like I did, but anything else isn't really my business."

She flinches a little at his statement. Logically she knows that Levi has lost many people in his life — it's not only the nature of the Survey Corps but the nature of life, loving people and then losing them. Still, he has always borne that burden with such stoicism that it's hard for her to imagine it affecting him. She can't imagine him up at night, alone, thoughts of the dead consuming him like they have her the last few years.

"But you've told her about us," Mikasa notes.

He raises an eyebrow.

"Us, now _that's_ an interesting concept," he says dryly. "And definitely, I've told her all the little details, your likes, dislikes, even sent her a lock of your hair in the mail."

Her sleep foggy mind takes a second to catch up with the fact that he's joking.

She must look confused because he smirks.

"Sorry, you're not awake enough for my bullshit. No, I haven't clued Hanji in on the specifics of how we occupy ourselves, though I'm sure she's drawn her own conclusions, I don't lie to her about anything."

The way he says it, like there's no room for deviation from the fact that he is always truthful with Hanji catches her a little off guard. She supposes that it makes sense that they are friends, and close ones at that, she can even recall this from years ago. She'd hardly paid attention though, her focus almost exclusively on Eren and Armin. She can see his dedication to her in his expression, that their friendship runs deep down past the more superficial elements of companionship. Still, the idea that someone knows about the two of them is somehow strange, because Mikasa doesn't really know what they are.

 _If Hanji's so smart then maybe she can fill me in sometime._

"Anyways, I told her to call me when she gets into one of her moods instead of resorting to self-mutilation, and since I don't really sleep it's not an issue. Sorry for waking you."

The idea of him fielding phone calls from a distressed Hanji in the middle of the night seems so thoughtful, so kind of him that she has to reassess her perception of him. It's not like he's given her any reason to think he wouldn't be that way, but it's still odd.

She rubs her eyes without thinking about it.

"Go back to sleep."

"What about you?"

She knows that he sleeps a handful of hours a night and sometimes takes a nap during the day, but it's late.

He glances over to the living room wearily.

"I can tell you're tired," she says, grabbing his hand.

Wordlessly he lets her take him upstairs to the bedroom. She turns on the lamp and arranges some pillows against the headboard.

"What are you doing?"

"Making it so you can sit up the way you like but still sleep on a bed."

He looks at her, clearly a little incredulous, but then his expression shifts to something she can't quite place, something softer.

After having arranged everything to her specifications, she crawls under the quilt with her scarf, glances up at him expectantly.

He sighs and sits down, pulling the crocheted blanket over his legs and adjusting as he leans back against the pillows.

Mikasa turns off the lamp and without thinking too hard about it snuggles her scarf to her chest with one hand and grabs his hand with the other, lacing their fingers together and quickly falling asleep.

* * *

It's been five days since Connie and Sasha left and Mikasa knows that they will likely be back soon.

The problem is, she doesn't particularly want to go back.

She likes whatever arrangement she has with Levi. They don't spend every minute of the day together. She goes over to Sasha and Connie's to take care of their animals for a few hours, he does work outside, she reads a book inside, he tends to his small garden while she washes the laundry, but there's something harmonious about it. When they're together it's either spent in companionable silence, light conversation or gritted teeth, grasping hands and words that, if she thinks them outside of the moment, make Mikasa turn so red she feels like she may faint.

She's also not ready to unpack the implications of how well things between them work.

"Sasha and Connie should be back, but I left a note saying I wouldn't be around so they don't worry," she says over dinner.

"Did you say where you were?"

She hesitates. "No, I just said I wouldn't be there."

He scoffs. "I guarantee Sasha has a few ideas. Connie is the densest person I know, but Sasha," he pauses to take a bite of his salad greens, "is easily the most intuitive person I've ever met."

"No way, if she knew she'd have bothered me about it."

He shakes his head. "I know these things, she definitely knows, she just doesn't bother you about it because she knows that you'd lie."

Mikasa frowns. It bothers her that he assumes that she'd lie about the two of them, even if he's right.

"Please tell me about how you know the woman I lived with for _years_ better than I do."

"I was your squad leader, it was my job to know these things. See, you and I," he gestures carefully with his fork between the two of them, "we're killers. For better or worse, we're the same that way, and we're good at it. Sasha though, Sasha's a hunter. She's like an animal, nearly impossible to deceive, can probably sense fluctuations in blood pressure for all I know. I'm telling you, that woman could probably pin down the first time I ever even thought of you naked."

"Was that a regular occurrence?" she teases.

He looks at her as if she has said something profoundly stupid and it makes her feel a little flustered because it's still hard for her to believe that this whole thing is happening. Even a few months ago the mere suggestion of it would've made her angry.

Later that night, well after the sun has set below the horizon and the only sounds are that of the crickets and the sticky summer heat, she makes him sit down on on his chair in the bedroom. She tells him that if he touches her without her permission she'll tie his hands together so tight he won't be able to feel them. She doesn't know if the look of excitement he gives her is from her threatening him or the potential consequences.

For whatever reason, the idea that he had thought of her, fantasized about her, makes her heart beat faster, her focus sharper, makes her want him more. She hadn't fantasized about being with him, but when it happened it'd felt so natural and right that she's surprised she hadn't.

He sits there in the chair, watching her with that gaze that makes her heart pound in her chest the same as it would when she was flinging herself through the air and going in for a kill. It makes her feel so good, so desired that she can't get enough of him looking at her like that.

So she takes her time undressing herself. She slowly undoes the buttons and lets the dress fall to the ground. She takes a moment, just standing there in just her underwear and runs a hand through her hair just because she knows he likes her hair. He's told her so in those vulnerable moments before completion; that lead up that almost feels better than actually finishing where you feel like the most desperate, most genuine, version of yourself.

She watches him swallow when she smooths her hands over her stomach, teases with the lace on her underwear but doesn't pull them down.

"Take off your pants," she says sharply.

She can tell it takes him a lot of effort to do this in a measured, controlled manner, can tell that he wants nothing more than to pull them off as quickly as possible. She can't wait to wear down that finely crafted control, like she always does.

He sits back down and she takes a moment to admire how he looks naked. When she looks at him, all she can think of is how his body looks in motion. He is such a physical being, so suited to the air, suited to combat that stillness looks almost unnatural. He always has this look of tension about him, as if his body is constantly ready for whatever is to come. He's all beautiful, lean muscle from years of necessity and she appreciates that necessity because she understands it. There is no vanity because his body is what kept him alive and she understands this better than perhaps anyone.

Still, this functionality appeals to her, so she kisses his pectoral muscles, letting her tongue lave over his nipple and enjoying gooseflesh that fans over his arms. The way he clenches his fist because she can tell he wants to touch her excites her.

She takes her time teasing him, lingering with her mouth on his hip bones, lightly tracing her fingers on the inside of his thighs until she hears him let out a quiet but definitely there noise between a groan and a whimper which nearly makes her laugh.

So she gently, almost coyly, smooths her tongue over the head of his cock and he immediately fans out his hands and clenches at his thighs. She can tell he's doing everything he can not to fist his hand in her hair and thrust into her mouth, and this moment of weakness pleases her to no end.

She'd never thought that she'd enjoy this as much as she does, feeling him hot in her mouth, the way he seems so vulnerable, even the taste of him makes her want to reach down between her legs and touch herself, but she needs to have more focus than that if she truly wants to unravel him. So she moves her mouth up and down as much of him as she can manage, using her hand to make up the difference. He starts to thrust reflexively into her mouth and she grabs his hip with her left hand and firmly holds him down in the chair simultaneously irritated and loving his lack of self-control.

"Mikasa–" he chokes out and she can tell he's about to come, even though he's trying not to.

 _Too bad._

She does her best to not cough or gag when he comes in her mouth and she considers herself moderately successful, though she's sure he doesn't notice either way. She pulls off him with a slight 'pop' sound and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Why'd you do that, that's disgusting." He asks, his breathing heavy and pupils blown.

She gets up off her knees and sits herself on the bed, popping her ass out in a way she knows makes her look desirable.

"You didn't seem to think so a moment ago, how's it any different from when you do me?"

"It just is," still he gets up off the chair and runs his hand up the back of her thigh and to her ass, playing with the lace of her black panties.

She nearly shivers at how good his hand feels on her, but she didn't tell him that he could get up, and this isn't what she has planned so she grabs his wrist so tightly she feels like it could nearly break. Here he is delicate, nearly feminine in his petite bone structure. She twists enough for him to stop the movement and cause that sharp sting of pain that the both of them enjoy. She pulls him to her, close enough that her lips brush up against his when she speaks.

"I didn't say you could touch me."

Even though he just came, she can see him twitch at her words.

 _He always gets off on this kind of thing._

"Sit back down."

He does so, eyes fixed on her curiously.

"Remember what you said the other day?" she asks coolly.

It takes him a moment, but she can see on his face when he remembers what she's referring to and he relaxes back into the chair, his gaze focused on her.

She starts slow, teasing him as she skirts around the lace of her bra until she reaches behind and takes it off. She runs her hands over her small breasts and rolls one of her nipples between her thumb and forefinger until it reaches a hard point.

He's wanted to watch her touch herself for a while, has told her he loves it when she does while he fucks her and she's always liked that, but the idea of putting herself on display like this has intimidated her.

Still, she runs her hands over her stomach and then slowly takes off her panties, balls them up and throws them into his lap.

She's almost surprised he doesn't pass out.

This gives her confidence when she slowly puts her hand between her legs and touches herself. She takes her time, running her fingers over the dampness of her opening and spreading it upward where she needs it, spinning slow, tight circles with her fingertips.

He watches her the whole time, hardly blinking and utterly captivated by the sight of her and this alone gets her off, the fact that he is content to just see her, to want her.

"Tell me what you want to do to me," she pants, her fingers still moving quickly.

He moves over to the foot of the bed and she doesn't have the sense to tell him to do otherwise, until his head is on her shoulder, his mouth against her ear.

"I want to touch every part of you, put my mouth on every inch of you, fuck you until you can't walk straight, be inside you when you come—"

"Fuck—" her head lolls to the side and she's so fucking close, "do it, touch me now, I want it—"

She's on her back with him moving inside her faster than she can make sense of, her back arching off the bed as she comes while he fucks her so hard the bed rattles against the wall.

He finishes with an uncharacteristic shout (he's normally quiet) and collapses on top of her. He stays inside her and kisses everywhere, her temple, her cheek, her mouth and she can't help but start to laugh because it tickles her overly sensitive body.

He eventually rolls off of her, quickly putting on his drawstring pants and laying back down on the bed. With a contented sigh says, "well, may as well kill me now, it's all downhill from here."

She laughs and pulls on her nightgown, then lays down again propping herself up on her side so she can look at him.

"Really? That good?"

He scoffs.

"I'm fucking forty years old and you had me worked up like some teenager who just discovered his cock."

She laughs again, feeling absolutely thrilled with her success.

"Teen Levi, hmm? Wonder what that looked life."

He runs a hand over his face.

"I can tell you, it was worse than you as a teen that's for sure."

"I was a model citizen," she drawls.

"That's not true and you know it, but compared to me maybe."

She traces a finger idly over his chest. "Tell me about it."

He sighs and wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in closer.

"I was a teenager completely on my own, in the Underground City who stole 3DMG off of drunk, useless MPs, take a guess."

"Mm," she hums distractedly, letting her finger linger on the dip between his pectoral muscles.

Still, she wonders what he had been like, before the Survey Corps, before becoming humanity's strongest. She knows little of his background, just that his mother died when he was young and he'd been raised by his serial killer Uncle. Then he founded a band of thugs that became his family before he somehow ended up in the Survey Corps. She doesn't feel it's her place to ask all the details because she's sure there are personal things, though in passing he has mentioned Isabel and Farlan. She assumes that they're both dead because otherwise she would probably know them.

He runs a hand through her hair, his fingertips massaging on her scalp and she hums contentedly.

"You have beautiful hair," he says seriously.

She thinks back to all those years ago when Jean had said the same thing and she'd found it boring and even slightly annoying.

Coming from him it makes her chest feel tight and her cheeks feel warm.

"Thank you."

They lay there like that for a few minutes, quietly touching each other and thinking about nothing in particular which feels like relief.

She yawns and her eyes start to grow heavy, so she lays her head on his chest.

"I'm gonna fall asleep."

"It's okay, I'll move you when I want to sleep."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," he reaches over and grabs her scarf off the bedside table. He wraps it around her hand just the way she likes to have it when she sleeps.

He does it the same as he would turn down the bedding or turn off the lamp, like it's just part of a routine. The gesture makes her feel genuinely cared for, so thought of that it's honestly foreign – it's been so long since someone has taken care of her.

"Thanks," she mumbles into his chest, snuggling the scarf tightly.

She falls asleep while he runs his hand through her hair and doesn't dream.

* * *

The next morning she wakes up and he's still asleep, sitting upright against the headboard the way he likes.

She can't recall a time she's actually seen him sleep and she knows that it's something he struggles with, so she sneaks as quietly as she can out of the bedroom and downstairs to make some breakfast.

She goes outside and lets the horses out to graze (even Erwin's asshole of a horse, who snaps at her three times) then gathers chicken eggs and the newspaper.

It's Friday, so she takes out the entertainment section and sees that her favorite band is playing at one of the clubs she used to frequent in the city. She thinks of the black dress that she has yet to wear, sitting in her trunk upstairs and her only twice worn dancing shoes.

She knows that Levi would grumble about being dragged all the way to the city to see a jazz band, but she wants to go.

She heads into the living room where the telephone is. She's only used one a handful of times, but she remembers how to use it. So she picks up and tells the operator to connect her to the Springer residence.

Sasha picks up.

"Hey, it's me."

"Oh hey Mikasa!" she says cheerily, "how are you? I got your note, hope you had a good night out."

She says it so neutrally that Mikasa can't help but agree with Levi that she definitely has an idea of what's going on.

 _Shorty is right._

"Hey, I was wondering if you and Connie wouldn't mind looking after Levi's animals this afternoon and tomorrow, my favorite band is playing in the city and I don't think he's ever heard Jazz so I was thinking about making him come along."

She tries her best to sound neutral and apathetic but she's so entirely sure she failed that she doesn't know why she bothered.

" _What_ he hasn't heard jazz!? You guys have to go! Of course we'll take care of it, payback for everything you did while we were gone! Have a good time, but don't do anything I wouldn't!"

The line goes dead, and Mikasa groans.

 _Sasha definitely knows._

She doesn't know if she's more flustered at the idea of someone knowing about what goes on between her and Levi or more irritated at the fact that he was right.

He's still asleep and she expects him to push back about going to the city, so she does everything she can to assure her desired outcome – she cleans the floors as best as she can, tidies the newspapers and cooks breakfast so that all they have to do is pack clothes and call a driver when he wakes up.

As she's taking breakfast out of the oven (a popover in a cast iron skillet, one of the few mildly impressive things she knows how to cook), she hears him walking down the stairs.

He seems a little surprised to see her up and about but he looks well-rested, at least for him.

She grabs jam and powdered sugar to go with the popover and sets the table.

"What's gotten into you this morning?" He asks suspiciously.

"I want to go see a jazz band in the city tonight, you should come with me."

"I knew there was something you wanted," he says while spooning jam onto his breakfast.

"I've already asked Sasha to take care of the animals, I did some cleaning, and even put the horses out to pasture for the morning–"

"Fine, fine," he says, "I'll come with."

She must look surprised because he raises an eyebrow at her.

"Why are you so surprised, you clearly want to go so then why would I say no?" he says boredly.

She does everything she can to keep the grin off her face but fails. She rocks forward on the balls of her feet and kisses him quickly on the cheek.

"I'll go pack!"

She goes up the stairs so quickly that she misses the red flush on his cheeks.

* * *

It's early evening by the time they make it to the city and Mikasa has missed it – the lights, the hustle and bustle of people going about their business is somewhat comforting to her despite how different it is from anything she'd known before.

They're staying at a hotel downtown. When they get out of the car, Mikasa refuses the help of the bellhop, insisting she can carry her own things just fine, which makes Levi snicker as he lets the bellhop carry his suitcase up to the room.

"He's just a kid who wants a tip, why not let him do his job?" Levi says wryly as Mikasa lugs her suitcase to the room.

"Because it's a waste of money when I'm perfectly capable of carrying my things," she insists. She unlocks the door with the key and sets her suitcase down.

Levi teases her for being stubborn, until the bellhop leaves and thinks he's out of earshot and says "Wow! The Captain Levi!" and Mikasa swears she sees a vein throb in his temple.

Mikasa has to stop herself from laughing as she hangs up her dress and lays out her stockings for the evening and puts her make-up box in the powder room.

The sun is starting to set, but nothing interesting really happens before nine o'clock, so Mikasa isn't concerned.

She takes off her traveling clothes and and puts on her slip and clips her garter belt to her sheer stockings. She turns on the lights and looks in the mirror.

She sighs, running her thumb over the scar on her cheekbone and the ever present frown line between her eyebrows.

 _I'm gonna feel pretty tonight, dammit._

She doesn't have a lot of makeup, but what does have she really likes. As skillfully as she knows how to, she powders her face, applies rouge to her cheeks and combs her eyelashes until they're thick and inky black.

"Hey—"

She slams the door shut with her foot before he manages to have it open.

"What the hell—"

"I'm getting ready," she says as she applies a light sheen of powder to her eyelids.

"Newsflash, I've seen it all so modesty is a little useless at this point."

"Go away," she replies irritatedly.

She hears what is certainly him leaning his back on the closed door.

"You're taking forever," he complains after thirty seconds.

She grinds her teeth, resisting the urge to snap her lip brush in two and stab him with it.

"I'll be done soon, are you dressed because I'm gonna be pissed if we're late for the first set because you didn't put on your clothes while you complained about me taking too long."

"I kinda like it when you're angry, you do this thing—"

"You won't like it this time, I wouldn't be doing any things!"

She hears him laugh and she really considers opening the door and punching him right in the face.

"Yes, Mikasa, I'm dressed, just waiting on you," he drones.

"Well keep waiting, I'll be done in a bit."

He mumbles something that sounds like "women stuff" but remains quiet after that.

She dips her lip brush into the bright red liner and traces the outline of her lips carefully, ignoring the fact that Levi is without a doubt grumbling and rolling his eyes at how long she's taking.

Screw him, if I want to take my time I will.

When she's satisfied, she takes her matching lipstick out of her clutch and fills it in carefully, rubbing her lips together and kissing a wash rag to get rid of the excess.

She glances at herself in the mirror and smiles softly. Overall, she's happy with the general effect. She's not the best at this kind of thing, but she's spent enough time looking at magazines to know what she likes and doesn't like, what she thinks is flattering and what she finds gaudy.

She's tried to put her hair into those trendy finger wave curls but she can never manage to get her hair to cooperate, so she simply leaves it the way it always is because short hair is considered stylish now anyways, but she" adds a silver headband decorated with rhinestones.

She slips on her shoes, a small heel and a strap that makes them appropriate for dancing, then pulls her dress off the hangar.

It's black and knee length. The hemline is uneven so that it moves with the wearer. It's beaded with silver sequins and rhinestones at the waist and fabric gathers on the shoulders and trails off, creating an effect similar to sleeves but without covering any skin.

"Hey, can you come in here now?"

"Oh so I'm allowed in now, are you sure?"

"Stop being an ass and help me with the buttons on the back of my dress," she says waspishly.

She's frustrated that he's being so obstinate, it's like he's just trying to make her angry at this point.

He is quick with the tiny and delicate buttons that end in the middle of her back, leaving her shoulder blades bare.

"Thanks," she says shortly.

She turns around and grabs her clutch off the vanity.

"Okay, now we can go," she says shortly.

She heads towards the door and glances over her shoulder.

"Are you coming?"

He shakes his head as if he had been lost in thought a moment before.

"Yeah," he says quickly, following her outside.

She knows the way to this club, she'd been there a few times with Jean.

Levi seems on edge and she can't place exactly why. So she just decides to ignore him.

They make their way into the club, and then it's like she suddenly hears it.

"Is that…?"

"Yeah, I think it is!"

"Wow, Captain Levi!"

"For real?"

"He's so much shorter than I imagined."

She's amazed at how many people seem to recognize him, though she remembers what it was like watching the Survey Corps come back from expeditions as a child. The bodies on the wagons, the grim faces, and Humanity's Strongest always coming back, time and time again. She vividly remembers the expedition to Shiganshina, people shouting Levi's name despite the fact that he walked alongside Eren, the boy who'd literally sheltered the power of the Titans inside his body.

"Who's he with?"

"She looks different."

Mikasa is so used to these types of comments that she almost doesn't hear them, doesn't register them. After all, she's always been different looking.

"I'll get us drinks," she says cooly.

"Please," he says, clearly exasperated.

She doesn't know what he normally drinks, but she knows him and can guess that he'd like scotch, so she orders him a glass and gets herself a gin and tonic.

By the time she gets back, he's so irritated that he all but gulps the drink she brought him despite the fact that it's aged scotch.

"I'm sorry, I didn't anticipate this," she says.

"It's fine, just annoying, give me another drink and I won't notice."

"The band will start soon and people will pay attention to that instead of you."

When they finish their second round of drinks, they're both feeling more relaxed and he offers to go up to the bar.

"No, it'll be faster if I go, they like to serve women first."

He smiles wryly and he rubs his foot up against her's underneath the table.

"That makes sense, I'd rather give you drinks than me if I were a bartender," he teases.

The gesture is so juvenile, so _stupid_ that she laughs and kicks his foot away with her's and he laughs at his failed overture.

"I'm a decent woman, I won't have some man of the world attempting to seduce me with such lewd behavior."

He rolls his eyes. "How many people have you fooled with that one?"

"Plenty, until you corrupted me."

The band has finally begun playing and Mikasa can't help but move slightly to the rhythm because she loves this music. Something about it is so exciting, so new and it makes her just want to move.

"Whiskey sour and a dry martini please," she says to the bartender.

"Man over there wants to buy you a drink," the bartender nods to the left at a younger looking brown haired man, clearly with a group of friends.

"No thanks," she says shortly. She doesn't like it when people try to buy her alcohol, even when she isn't out with someone else.

She takes the drinks and turns around, only to bump into someone.

"Sorry, I–"

"Mikasa?"

She looks up to see that she's bumped into Jean.

"Oh, hey," she says awkwardly, remembering their fight the last time they saw each other.

"I…I thought you left the city," he says. She can tell he's nervous.

"I did," she says shortly, "but this is my favorite band so I decided to come and listen."

"Yeah I remember. That they were your favorite, that is."

She feels the awkwardness between them and takes a sip of her martini.

He glances at the drinks.

"So are you drinking both of those or…?"

"Don't be stupid, you know I'm a lightweight–"

"Oi, Jean what's taking you so long did you– oh."

Jean looks over to a petite woman wearing a silver sequined dress and blonde, curly hair.

Jean clears his throat awkwardly.

"You remember Hitch Dreyse?"

Mikasa thinks for a moment and vaguely remembers her as a member of the Military Police.

"Mikasa Ackerman, I'd shake your hand but I don't want to drop these," she says apologetically.

"Oh it's fine," she smiles brightly, "where are you sitting? We didn't get in early enough to have a spot, do you have room?"

"Hitch–"

Mikasa can't get a read on if Hitch knows that she and Jean have something of a history together or if Hitch even remembers who she is. She highly doubts that anyone who'd been a soldier doesn't know who she is, but some people pretend because it's awkward.

Jean noticed she had two drinks, and unless she leaves right now there's no way to avoid that Jean will see who she's with, so she decides that it's better to just rip off the bandage, so to speak.

"Sure, we have room," she says politely.

She leads them over to the table and she looks at Levi, who's sitting there relaxed, leaning against the curve of the booth and looking slightly bored, though she sees him tapping his foot along to the music.

He sees her and the corner of his mouth upturns a little, not quite a smile but pleased all the same.

"I thought you'd gotten lost," he says sarcastically, taking the tumbler of whiskey from her and taking a sip.

She laughs a little nervously.

"What's–"

"Captain Levi!?"

Levi glares at Jean so sharply that she can't help but think that it's more than just the title that's irritating him.

"I haven't taken up any maritime activities so I'm not a Captain of anything," he quips.

Mikasa can see that Jean has no idea what he thinks of the two of them being here together.

 _He can draw his own conclusions._

"Right," he finally manages. "I thought you were out by Sasha and Connie," he says lightly.

"I am, but she," he nods his head towards Mikasa, "said I was missing out on this whole jazz thing so she dragged me out of my hiding place."

She smiles softly at this and slides into the booth next to him.

Hitch makes a face when she looks at Levi and Mikasa is starting to remember the incident between the two of them, that she'd blamed him for the deaths of all those people in Stohess and she realizes very quickly that this is going to be awkward.

"Who's your friend, Kirstein?"

Hitch glares.

"Hitch Dreyse, she was–"

"Oh that's right, I remember now," Levi drawls and takes another sip of his drink. "You're a smart one."

"Why's that?" Hitch asks.

"It's a good idea to keep company with people who have tried and failed to kill you, that's what I do with this one here," he nods over to Mikasa, "That way, you know where they stand, but also know that they won't follow through on it."

Mikasa stomps hard on his foot, making him wince.

"Stop being an ass," she hisses, then looks over to Hitch, "I'm sorry, he's not used to being out of his cage among civilized people."

"Don't let her fool you, she acts quiet but she's actually totally crazy," Levi says seriously.

Jean is looking at them both like they've started rambling about the Church of the Walls.

She sees him trying to work it out in his head, but he ends up settling for finishing his drink in one gulp.

 _Probably for the best Jean, you're not going to be able to figure this one out._

"Let's go dance," Mikasa says shortly, grabbing Levi by the arm and dragging him out of the booth.

He doesn't know the new dances, but he's a quick study so by the time the first set has ended he can twirl her and dip her like he's been doing it for years, which isn't surprising to her because how different are fighting and dancing, really?

Dancing with Levi is almost as fun as fighting with him. The music is loud, the club is packed with all types of people, everyone out to have a good time.

Her mind couldn't be further from the embarrassment she'd felt earlier. She's sweaty from dancing but she doesn't care. Her thoughts are loose from the liquor and she's having the most fun she's ever had.

They take a break and head back to their booth. Levi takes off his suit jacket because it's warm inside with all these people and Mikasa lets herself look unabashedly at his broad shoulders, remembering how nice his muscles feel under her hands, what it feels like when he pins her down with those strong arms and does whatever he wants with her.

"So, what do you think?"

"Good music," he says before he takes a sip of water.

"You're a good dancer considering you don't do it often."

He shrugs.

"You don't make it difficult," he says lightly.

He looks her up and down and it makes her pulse quicken. Suddenly she doesn't know how long she wants to stay out because as fun as it is, there are plenty of things she likes to do privately.

Someone else may have a hard time reading him, but she's gotten better at it. Sometimes he still leaves her feeling clueless, but she can tell that he's thinking the same thing she is.

Right when she's about to ask him if he wants to leave, Hitch, arm looped into Jean's as she drags him over while she waves at them.

 _She's friendlier when she's had a few drinks._

"Hey, Jean got the password for downstairs, you guys wanna go?"

She's only gone to a club that required a password one time, and she'll admit that it'd been fun. She'd also slept with Jean that same night, but that's somewhat irrelevant.

She can feel Jean looking at her. He has always been analytical, similar to Armin in this regard, and she can practically hear his mind trying to work out just what exactly is going on between her and Levi. She supposes that they could just look like friends out together.

"Do you want to?"

"Sure, if it's boring we can leave."

So they grab their things and head down a hallway to a staircase that goes underground to a door with a very large, imposing seeming man guarding the door.

Mikasa can't help but think this kind of thing funny, she knows that Levi wouldn't even break a sweat with a guy like that, but people usually hire bouncers for their appearances, not their actual skills.

Jean tells the too-big bouncer the password (gold rush) and they walk into the dimly lit basement. There's a singer dressed in next to nothing with only a piano for accompaniment. The room is blue with smoke, the wallpaper is peeling slightly and one of the light bulbs flicker.

Mikasa goes up to the bar and sees that they have a selection of cigars, so she buys one and two glasses of scotch that she thinks will go well.

She fumbles with the cigar cutter because it's been a while, but she manages. She takes out her matches and lights the end of the cigar, inhaling to get the ember going.

She walks back to where Levi's leaning against a wall with his arms crossed as he looks around the room appraisingly.

"Hey," she hands him the glass of scotch and takes another drag off of the cigar.

"Well look at you," he says teasingly.

She exhales and then takes a sip of the scotch.

"Mm, that's good together, here," she hands him the cigar.

"This is your's," he says skeptically.

"So?"

" _So_ , it's been in your mouth."

"You're joking, right?"

"No."

"I regularly have my tongue in _your mouth_ , among other places, and you're bitching about sharing a cigar?"

He sighs. "Alright," he inhales from the cigar. When he exhales she can't help but admire how handsome he looks in the dim light with a tumbler of scotch, his bowtie untied and just hanging around his neck.

He sips the scotch and makes a face.

"What do you think?"

"When did you develop such a taste for fancy shit like this, that's really good."

"See I told you, now give it back," she grabs it from him and takes a drag.

She glances across the room and sees that Jean and Hitch have started playing roulette, his arm wrapped low around her waist.

She sighs.

"This feels awkward."

He scoffs and grabs the cigar from her again.

"No kidding, surprised I haven't punched Kirstein's lights out."

"What? Why?"

He glares over in Jean's direction.

"Because he looks at you the same way he always has; like he'd rather be looking at you naked."

She laughs.

"You're imagining it, he's here with someone else, not to mention he already has seen me naked."

He frowns and it takes Mikasa a second.

He's jealous.

The thought is so absurd that she nearly starts laughing. For all his faults, Levi is an exceedingly rational person. His temper is limited to mild disdain and cool, restrained fury, so seeing him exhibit something as petty as jealousy over something like this is amusing.

And flattering if I don't lie to myself.

"I wouldn't worry about it," she says lightly, sidling up to him and putting his arm around her waist.

He doesn't miss a beat, sliding his hand down her waist and to her ass.

'I'm not worried about anything except how I manage to find my way under your dress as quickly as possible, because I can't stop thinking about how good your ass looks."

She swallows, wishing that they were anywhere but in public but simultaneously loving the fact that he wants her and that, despite his impatience earlier, her effort didn't go unnoticed.

"Just wait until we get an opportunity to ditch Jean, then we can see about my dress," she says, managing to sound more indifferent than she actually feels and taking another sip of the scotch.

Levi looks around the room.

"This place is surprisingly seedy, a drug deal just happened over there and I'm relatively confident that that asshole over there is a pimp."

Her eyes widen slightly.

"How do you tell?"

He shrugs. "Sensible people don't wear that many rings, and men usually aren't that interested in talking to other men at places like these, he's probably trying to meet a quota for the night."

He sighs and takes his hand off of her waist when he notices Jean and Hitch coming back over from the roulette table.

So he doesn't want to be caught fondling me, interesting.

Maybe he just doesn't want to deal with it, but Mikasa thinks he probably enjoys fucking with Jean's head more than anything.

"What're you guys up to, we just won a bunch of cash!" Hitch yells excitedly and entirely too close to Mikasa.

And I thought I couldn't handle my alcohol.

"We were just discussing the price of corn," Levi says sarcastically.

Hitch looks genuinely confused.

"That's a really strange thing to talk about."

Jean rolls his eyes. "He's fucking with you Hitch."

Hitch frowns. "You're an asshole."

"He knows that," Mikasa says boredly, taking another puff off the cigar.

"Since when do you smoke those?" Jean asks.

Mikasa shrugs.

"Since whenever I feel like it," she says a little too meanly.

Then she feels something rub up against her backside and she glares at Levi.

"What?" he asks.

"Don't–" but this time she feels someone grab her and laugh.

Before she realizes what she's doing, she's slammed her tall would-be-assailant up against the wall, his feet dangling on the ground.

The man is clearly terrified, his eyes wide with surprise which, considering she's holding him with one hand by the throat quite easily makes sense. She also recognizes him.

"You tried to buy me a drink earlier, didn't you?" she asks.

He can't really answer because her hand is gripping his throat.

"Oi, Mikasa–"

"Shut up Jean," she growls.

"Next time, take a hint," she lets go of him unceremoniously, watching him stumble to the ground and gasp for air.

"Let's go, I'm bored," she says to Levi.

He extinguishes the cigar on a nearby ashtray and puts back on his suit jacket.

"Fucking crazy bitch!"

Mikasa rolls her eyes, happy to ignore him until she hears him come from behind, swinging a punch at her head. Jean moves as if to intercept it and Levi just watches as she grabs the man's fist and, using her other arm for resistance, snaps the bone in his forearm like it's a twig. Then she tosses him to the ground and kicks him in the face, breaking his nose just because she feels like it.

"You must be a special kind of stupid," Levi says, clearly amused as he watches the man writhe on the ground. The whole room is watching, the singer even stopped singing.

People start to talk because of _course_ people recognize Levi.

"I don't know why the hell people recognize me and not you," he deadpans.

"Morons like this guy only notice that I look different because I'm Oriental, sometimes it's hard when you do most of your thinking with your cock."

One of the guy's friends is trying to help him up off the ground and failing, getting blood from the broken nose all over his shirt.

"Do you half kill every guy who tries to cop a feel?!"

"Want to find out?"

She feels it, that anger, that adrenaline that compels her to fight until she's won, even though she still has some of her sensibilities about her. She knows he's just a pathetic piece of trash; still, she's angry, and when she's angry she likes to fight.

"Alright, let's go, we don't need to spend the night in jail even though I know you don't really give a shit about that kind of thing," Levi looks over to Jean and Hitch, the latter whose jaw seems to have permanently dropped open in shock, and simply nods goodbye.

He grabs her and leads her out of the club, both of them ignoring the shocked expressions of the other patrons.

Mikasa is still angry, her head swimming from the potent combination of alcohol and adrenaline. She'd forgotten how easy it was to hurt someone that wasn't Levi, how powerful it made her feel to watch his body crumple up, the satisfying snap sound of a broken bone.

Mikasa is lost in her thoughts the whole walk to the hotel room.

As soon as the door clicks shut behind them, Levi pins her up against the door and kisses her. She gasps in surprise, but quickly catches up to his mood. The kiss is bruising and hard, all teeth and tongue, he has a hand on her thigh, gripping it tightly and another on her breast.

"Watching you beat the shit out of that scumbag was one of the hottest things I've ever seen," he says while he fumbles with the buttons on the back of her dress with an urgency that borders on frantic.

"Tell me more," she demands while she unbuttons his shirt. She loves hearing him tell her about how attractive he finds her, how much he wants her.

He finally manages to undo her dress and pulls it off her shoulders so it slips off of her and onto the ground.

"Fucking Kirstein," he kisses her throat and undoes the clasp of her bra, "was staring at you the whole night," he throws her bra to the ground and kisses down her clavicle to her breast, "even though he had that fucking police reject hanging on him," he sucks on her nipple and she throws her head back and inhales sharply, "but I can't blame him," he murmurs against her skin, "because he knows what he's missing, I almost feel sorry for him."

She knows that the alcohol has loosened his tongue and she can't say that she minds one bit. It makes her feel powerful, important, wanted.

He undoes the garter belt with dexterity that surely stems from years of wearing 3DMG, making quick work of her stockings and underwear, leaving her completely naked. He sits down on the foot of the bed and pulls her into his lap, and he kisses and sucks on her breasts for what feels like hours, until she's subconsciously squeezing her legs together and writhing around on him, desperate for some sort of relief.

He lays her down on the bed and without any sort of prelude puts his mouth between her legs. Normally he takes his time, spends a few minutes teasing her, working her up a little bit. Instead it feels like he can't get enough of her, like he'll die if he doesn't map out every nerve, every fold with the flat of his tongue.

The alcohol has taken the few inhibitions she has, so she doesn't hesitate when she pushes herself harder against his mouth, about grabbing his hair and pulling him towards her.

" _Fuck_ use your fingers too."

He's quick to oblige her and the sound of his tongue moving in tandem with his fingers inside of her has her toes curling in the sheets and yelling complete nonsense.

She swears that the world flashes white for a second when she comes. He doesn't stop, knows that it's different for her and lasts longer and the room is filled with the sound of her heavy breathing, coming in short gasps of air.

After a moment it's too much and she pulls away from him. Sometimes after she comes she finds herself tired, but right now she feels completely energized, like her body is hooked up to a live wire and she has to move or she'll go crazy. She pulls him up to her and then rolls on top of him, loving the way he watches her, like he needs to commit her every move to memory.

She takes off his pants, tossing them carelessly onto the floor and straddles him, lining herself up with him and sinking down onto him.

He's worked up, grabbing at her waist and thrusting his hips upward to meet her movements. That cool, aloof facade of his is completely gone as she rides him. She loves it when he's like this, completely in the moment, like she could ask him his own name and he wouldn't know it because his only thought is of her.

"Say my name, I want to hear you say it."

He sits up so that their chests are pressed flush against each other as she rocks against him, and all he does is say her name, over and over again in her ear while he grabs at her shoulders, pressing himself even closer to her as he finishes.

They both take a moment to catch their breath, laying next to each other, sweat slicked bodies on the rumpled bedding.

Once she's collected herself she snuggles up against him and sighs, enjoying the sound of his heartbeat, the smell of him, the warmth of his skin.

He traces bored circles on her shoulder blades and sighs.

"You don't have anything to worry about," she says lightly.

"Hmm?"

"About Jean," she pauses for a moment because even drunk it takes a bit for her to say. "I like you," she says, "I like you a lot."

He laughs and closes his eyes.

"That's good, I like you too."

She knows that it's more than that; that she's dangerously close to so many wonderful, beautiful, absolutely terrifying things with him, but for now this is enough.


	5. Chapter 5

Mikasa wakes up sprawled out over the bed, her legs tangled up in the bedding. She quickly realizes that she's still naked which is a great indicator of just how intoxicated she was last night because she normally dislikes sleeping naked. She feels a little sore, wincing when she moves to get out of bed.

 _I drank too much last night._

She remembers what she'd said to Levi last night, about how she likes him, before going to sleep and runs a hand over her face.

"Fuck," she murmurs.

She hadn't lied, but something about it is embarrassing. She really prefers for these kind of things to remain unspoken, at least until she has a better handle on it.

Part of her feels guilty that she's developing feelings beyond wanting to see him naked. It's uncomfortable because it's not the same as anything she's ever felt before. With Eren it was simple; she loved him more than anyone or anything else. It was simple in that she easily understood how she felt.

This is different. This whole thing started because it had been easy, intuitive and it is slowly but surely becoming less and less that way. She finds herself fighting the urge to withdraw back into her solitary way of living from before, but the thought makes her feel ill. That cold, numb, haze that she couldn't dispel was worse than anything; like she hadn't really been alive, just existing on a day by day basis. She likes how she feels around him, likes spending time together, but admitting anything beyond that, thinking about the implications seems expressly forbidden in her and mind. It's too complicated.

She moves to get up and take a shower and notices a glass of water and a note on the bedside table.

 _Out meeting Hanji. 45 E Crane St._

It takes her a moment to realize that the implication is that if she wants to come by she can.

She's friends with Hanji, in all honesty during her time in the Survey Corps she would say that she had easily been closer with her than she'd been with anyone outside of her graduating class, but something about meeting up with Hanji while she's sleeping with her best friend seems odd.

Still, he wouldn't have bothered leaving a note if he didn't want her to show up. He'd never ask outright. Since he indulged this whole jazz endeavor of her's, showing up for coffee is probably the least she can do in return. Plus Hanji probably would like to see her.

She showers quickly and puts on an olive green skirt, cream colored blouse and a brown hat. She gets turned around a few times trying to find the cafe but she manages to find the place. It's a large, open cafe with floor to ceiling windows with plenty of patrons on the busy Saturday morning.

She sees them from a distance. Hanji is gesturing wildly about something and she can tell that Levi is amused by the barely there smile on his face. He hasn't spotted her yet, so she walks over to the table. Hanji sees her first, her face lighting up excitedly. Levi glances over at her, and the look he gives her nearly makes her stop walking. She can see for just a split moment that he is _genuinely_ happy to see her and it makes her want to bend over and kiss him.

Of course she does _not_ do that.

"Mikasa!"

Hanji gets up out of her chair to hug her and Mikasa's eyes widen at her excitement.

"It is so good to see you! You look well!"

Mikasa can sense that there's another meaning to her words and she feels her cheeks get warm.

Hanji throws her head back and laughs at her reaction. She looks at her appraisingly and pokes her cheek like she's one of her experiments.

"See, look, your color is so improved!"

She swats away her hand and sits down, scooting her chair up to the edge of the table.

"The country air must suit me," she says boredly.

"Obviously," Hanji replies calmly.

Levi is glaring at Hanji through this entire exchange, but he doesn't say anything, just takes a sip of his coffee.

Hanji grins from ear to ear and keeps looking between the two of them.

 _Dear God._

Mikasa forgot how quickly Hanji speaks when she's excited. She talks about everything from a new type of medicine she's been working on to her new calisthenic routine that has given her 'more energy than ever before!"

"Speaking of energy and calisthenics," she looks around them dramatically, "I'm getting really excited about the the preliminary results of the study we all worked on together."

"Glad we could help with your mad scientist fuck-fuck games, four-eyes," Levi says sarcastically.

"You can really be a drag, y'know that right?"

Mikasa plays with the rim of her teacup distractedly. Something about the whole thing makes he feel off. She isn't sure how much she likes thinking about Hanji's experiment.

Levi glances over to her and he must be able to tell that she doesn't want to talk about it, so he changes the subject with Hanji. She feels a rush of gratitude towards him, thankful that he isn't oblivious to how she feels even if she doesn't say anything.

Mikasa conceptually understands that Hanji has drawn a reasonable amount of correct conclusions about her and Levi, and it honestly doesn't bother her, it's just strange. Strange that there are conclusions to draw, strange that they spend time together, strange that she likes spending as much time with him as she does.

They say goodbye to Hanji and leave together. Levi doesn't want to make Sasha and Connie take care of the animals for the evening and if they want to make it back at a reasonable hour they have to leave now.

Even though the city is large and it's relatively early for a Saturday, she can't help but feel relieved they don't run into Jean again, as ridiculous as that seems. Not only is there the awkward tension between the Levi and him, Jean reminds her of a dark time in her life. A time she made a lot of bad decisions and she feels ashamed for using him the way she did.

She is tired from the trip. By the time they get back to his house, the sun is starting to set and she struggles to keep her eyes open.

Levi notices, he doesn't say so outright but he asks her if she wants to make sandwiches for dinner instead of helping him with the horses for the evening.

She doesn't argue with him and honestly feels grateful.

It's late by the time he comes in and eats dinner, standing up and talking to her while she washes the dishes.

"Does Hanji unsettle you?" He asks a little too lightly for the question to be entirely casual

She set's the last dish down on the drying rack and turns toward him, trying to keep her body language casual by leaning against the counter.

"What do you mean?"

"You looked uncomfortable, when she was talking about all of her," he makes a throwaway gesture with his hand "work."

She frowns and crosses her arms.

"I mean, if you think about it, the whole thing is kind of unsettling, isn't it?"

He shrugs.

She finds his nonchalance slightly irritating.

"Think about it, your father was–"

"My mother was an Ackerman, I don't have a father."

The way he says it is the closest she's heard him to sounding angry in a while. Indifference, boredom, sarcasm, frustration, amusement; those are all well within the usual spectrum of what she'd consider characteristic of Levi, but anger is not typical for him.

She doesn't ask him about it. If he wants to tell her something, he does. If he doesn't, it's not her business.

"Well your mother then," she continues delicately, "and any other family you had, were all made for some sort of purpose. Who else is like that, and to be made for killing at that, doesn't it make you feel," she hesitates, "just kind of wrong? Even…" she inhales deeply, "Even Eren, he was…he was a titan, he was strong but he was also just…normal, just a boy pulled into something extraordinary by his father. You and I, it's different."

"Is it really that different though? How different is titan serum from what happened to you when you were a girl, whatever changed you?"

She thinks of her father, dead on the floor, his blonde hair matted and sticky with blood, her mother and the way she had yelled when she tried to protect her and her stomach churns like she may be sick.

"Because what changed came from inside of me. No matter what, there was that…" she struggles for the correct words because she doesn't have them, doesn't know how exactly to put words to something so complicated, "that power somewhere deep down that overwhelmed me…" she trails off, a little scared about what she's about to say.

"I always thought it was chance, that I was just reacting to the situation and then later maybe that it was just my need to protect Eren, though even that need was abnormal…it was so much bigger than just protecting someone I loved, I needed to do everything I could for him, felt it deep down inside myself like I do anything else, with that same certainty…I didn't realize anyone else was like that, until I met you."

Her voice cracks and she covers her mouth, frustrated with herself for getting so upset, admitting to her weakness, the grief she's lived with. She feels like she's either going to be sick, burst into tears or punch a wall, perhaps all three.

"You felt the same way, you understood whatever it is inside. Fighting to survive, it felt right. I always told myself it was the titans, that they'd taken so much, that I was protecting others, that I was just doing what I needed to," she's already shaking wishing that she could stop talking but she just can't.

"But without it, without that purpose I feel constantly like I'm screaming and no one can hear me, that the world's just grey and dull without Eren, that I wish I was the one who was dead and everyone around me doesn't understand, everyone just wants me to keep going like I always have. Every new day terrifies me but if I look back I'm just as lost," she thinks of countless evenings spent with Jean, fake smiles and laughs, empty sex, about thinking about walking into traffic and letting herself get run over by a passing automobile.

"But it goes away when I'm with you," she whispers, "I don't know why but I can't stop, I need the world to make sense again."

She can feel it, that familiar, otherworldly feeling that pushes her towards him. It's no different than her focus before she would dive through the air, no different than flow of her body when she fought with her fists clenched and heart racing.

"Whether it's fighting you or fucking you, it's the only thing that's made sense to me in years and all this bullshit with Hanji says there's a reason for it, the reason that we feel the way we do, act the way we do," she's close to yelling now, her heartbeat pounding in her head, her hands balled into fists so tight that her fingernails break the skin on her palms.

"Why me, why did my father have to die if we're supposed to be this strong people serving kings and whatever the fuck else, why am I like this?!"

He grabs her and kisses her hard on the mouth, and god it's everything she needs right now, needs things to feel easy, needs things to make sense.

 _He knows._

She remembers watching Eren transform into a titan; the flash of lightning, his body overtaken by muscle, skin and bone in a rush of power and she wonders if what she's feeling right now can compare. She feels like she could fight an entire horde of titans by herself, scale the walls of the past and fly into the air where nothing else matters.

She can't focus on anything else, she needs this, needs to feel that certainty again because everything else is wrong. She doesn't care if she's just giving into whatever monster is inside of her because maybe that's just what she is; all she was ever meant to be and at least she's not alone. At least he has it too, knows what it's like to just move without thinking about it, to fight every day just to survive at all costs.

She doesn't give a shit about tearing away his clothes, doesn't care that the way she grabs him will leave bruises. She can see in his eyes that he's in a similar state of mind, like he's moving without thinking as takes the switch blade out of his pocket and cuts her dress apart from hemline to neckline and tosses it aside. He kisses and bites at her muscled shoulders, up her neck and to her ear as he threads a hand through her hair.

They're on the ground, the stone floor is cold on her bare legs as he pulls her panties off. There's no hesitation between the two of them, no words exchanged because they don't need them.

She pulls him into her with grasping hands and breathy nonsense coming out of her mouth. She digs her heel into his back, wraps her arms around him so tightly, feels his breath on her neck.

When it's like this she sometimes feels as if she's simply a passenger in her own body. Every part of him she touches is like she was born knowing it. She knows to kiss where his jaw meets his throat the same way she knows how to inhale and exhale, she knows to smooth her hands over his biceps like she knows to blink her eyelids periodically, it's intuitive, it's easy and that's what she needs so desperately.

She rocks her hips against his, begging that he move faster, harder, deeper, as if doing that could imprint this intuitive way of living into her skin, her body, her heart until it never leaves her ever again.

He finishes before she does but he props himself up on his forearm and fucks her with his fingers, the wet sound of his come inside her making her all the more wound up. She makes so much noise that if they had neighbors she'd be sure they'd hear her but she hardly cares because her pride is an easy thing to sacrifice.

"God I'm close, don't stop please—!"

She yells something that sounds like his name, her toes curling on the stone floor, her hands grabbing at his shoulders while she trembles and shakes.

He sits back, resting against the kitchen cabinets as he wipes the sweat from his brow while they catch their breath.

She stares at the ceiling, that knowing, blissful feeling still buzzing around inside of her. She lives for this, these moments of clarity that she has when she's around him because it's all she has, all she can cling to in a world that doesn't make sense anymore.

She sits up, naked as the day she was born on the cold kitchen floor.

"I don't feel like myself unless we're like this, unless we're together," she confesses.

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, clearly trying to think of the right thing to say.

"I feel the same way," he says after a moment.

Somehow this makes her feel relieved. This whole times she's wondered what this was to him. There is a part of her that has intuitively understood that he felt the way she felt, but hearing the words, having him confirm it somehow soothes her in a way that she didn't expect.

She leans against his shoulder, bringing her knees close to her chest and covering herself with the remains of her ruined dress.

"I won't pretend to know the answer to anything you've asked," he says quietly as he rests his head up against her's.

"I've wondered a lot of it myself. I've felt guilt for years, wondered if I gave back enough to merit the sacrifices that others have made so I could do what I had to," he glances at her and takes her hand, running his thumb over the top of her knuckles in a gesture she finds oddly soothing, "you can wonder forever why and you're always going to come up short. There's nothing you can do. As for all this stuff with Hanji," He smiles a little, "no matter what she finds out you're still just a stubborn brat who doesn't know what's good for her."

She laughs suddenly, the tears she'd been holding back from earlier rolling down her cheeks.

"I really don't know what's good for me, do I?"

He shakes his head.

"No, you don't."

She grabs his hand and stands up, taking him along with her.

She wraps his arms low around her waist, leaning down onto his shoulder and sighing, letting herself enjoy how he smells, how he is here instead of gone, how he is something consistent in her life for the first time in so long.

They stand there like that for a moment, naked, in his kitchen and quiet.

"I'm going to turn over a new leaf," she says after a minute.

"Hmm?"

"I'm going to start doing things that are good for me," she says quietly. She hugs him to her tighter. She doesn't say anything else because it's still too difficult. She can't find the words for her feelings because it's too hard speak her heart. She's not a woman who bears her soul easily to others, she stays inside of herself where at the very least she is in control.

It makes her seem hard, even cold. There have been times that she's convinced herself that she was these things, tried to make herself believe that she didn't care.

She knows that this is anything but the truth, that she cares more than anything, feels things deeply down to the core of who she is as a human.

But she's made up her mind. She's not going to fight this anymore. She's going to take whatever happiness she can, cling to it because everything is fleeting, everything can disappear. The world is as cruel as it has always been, but she's found a place she can escape from that.

"I'm tired, can we go to bed?"

There's an intimacy to this, the way she feels like she can't sleep without him near anymore, and it leaves her more vulnerable than she really wants to accept.

"Yeah," he says quietly.

They go upstairs and change into pajamas. Mikasa feels stiff and exhausted.

"You're moving oddly," he says.

"I'm sore."

"From kicking the shit out of that guy last night?"

"No," she pauses for a moment, feeling a little bashful at what she's about to say, "when you drink you're a little less…careful."

Despite the fact that they regularly fight each other even if the sex gets rough it's usually not so much that the other is legitimately sore.

For a moment he looks concerned.

"Downstairs, I–"

"Shh, it's fine," she dismisses sharply. "Let's not pretend I didn't enjoy myself."

He sits on the bed, against the headboard and pats the bed in front of him.

"Sit."

"I'm fine–"

"I know, but sit."

She grumbles, slightly irritated at being coddled, but sits in front of him all the same. He puts his palm on her shoulder blade and presses, then grabs her wrist and pulls backwards.

"What are you–"

"Relax," he says irritatedly.

She huffs and and he presses his thumb on a knot and she hisses.

"That's relaxed? How the hell do you walk around with this much tension, I'm honestly surprised you didn't snap in two when you were in maneuvering gear."

She grits her teeth as he presses his thumb on another knot.

"It's different, easier to relax."

"Only you would say it's easier to relax when you're swinging to your potential death than it is when you walk."

"Ah! That hurts!"

"Give it a minute."

She endures while he stretches and presses on places in her arm, then her neck and lower back.

"Turn your head to the left."

She does and whatever he does to the tendon connecting her neck to her shoulder makes her moan and go slack-jawed.

"See there, you're relaxed," he says smugly.

"Shut up and keep doing that," she says quietly, closing her eyes.

"Not very polite," he says. Still, he continues rub and methodically stretch certain muscles until she swears she can feel all of the blood circulating in her body.

"That soreness isn't entirely my fault, you should try relaxing specific muscle groups when you wake up in the morning, otherwise you'll probably turn into a statue or something," he says sarcastically.

"Mmhmm, yeah, sure," she says, too sleepy to argue with him like she normally would.

If she was tired before, she feels like she's going pass out and sleep for a hundred years now. Being away and then getting upset earlier has her exhausted.

She scoots over to her side of the bed and pulls down the quilt, grabs her red scarf and rests her head on his thigh. He leans up against the headboard the way he likes and plays with her hair. She thinks he finds it calming because she can tell he does it well after she's asleep by how tangled her hair is in the morning.

"G'night," she says, inhaling the smell of her scarf and snuggling more into the blankets.

"Sleep well, Mikasa."

There's a gentleness in his tone, such a kindness in the way he says her name that, were she more alert, she'd overanalyze it. She can't keep her eyes open any longer, so it'll have to wait for later.

* * *

The next morning, she feels notably less achy. She has no idea where he learned how to alleviate soreness like that, but she's going to keep this newfound talent of his in mind.

Levi isn't in bed, but she notices that one of her favorite dresses – blue with buttons and a tie around the waist, is folded neatly at the foot of the bed, along with a clean pair of stockings.

She smiles softly at the gesture. She knows that he does a lot of these things because he gets irritated when anything is out of place, but she also knows that he's thoughtful in ways she never would've expected years ago.

She dresses herself and goes downstairs to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her hair. Whatever soap he keeps around agrees with her, it doesn't dry out her skin like the harsh, ashy soap Sasha keeps around.

 _Sasha and Connie._

She's been absent long enough that honestly she'd be surprised if even Connie hadn't made some sort of assumption.

She doesn't know what she should be doing. On one hand, she's lived a fairly nomadic life the past few years, going wherever the wind blows when it suits her, leaving when she wants change.

She doesn't want to go back to sleeping by herself, clutching her scarf desperately at night, thoughts of Eren haunting her until she succumbs to exhaustion, but she also hasn't asked if she can stay here, hasn't unpacked the implications of such a permanent-seeming arrangement.

She pours herself a mug of coffee and looks in the pantry for something to eat. She hears the door open and assumes it's Levi coming in from morning chores so she starts to slice a piece of bread for him in addition to the one she had for herself.

"Hey, Levi, do you want honey butter on this or just jam?"

"Heichou likes honey butter?"

She jumps slightly, turning around to see Sasha with Elise in tow. Elise smiles widely at her, her chubby little hands reaching for her happily.

"Oh, hi," she nervously tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Look, Elise has missed you!" Sasha smiles, "Say hi to Mikasa!" Elise just smiles and laughs and Mikasa can't help but feel her heart warm at how precious of a person Elise is.

"You know where Heichou is?" Sasha continues after a moment, "I'm going into town because Connie and I are looking at storefronts for the business and to meet up with the town midwife–"

"What? Are you…?"

It takes Sasha a second to realize what she's asking.

"Oh no absolutely _not_ , this one is enough of a handful for now," she hitches Elise further up on her hip. "I've been helping out, I'm going to start training to replace her because she's starting to get really old and it's something I like doing, I thought I told you this."

Mikasa has to admire how busy Connie and Sasha have kept themselves in this peaceful era. Not only have they done that, both of them have found fulfilling, vital ways to serve their community. She doesn't know how they've done it, gone from constantly fighting for their lives to living such a normal life.

 _They've always had each other though. They'd married almost immediately after the war ended, traveled a bit until they'd settled down into family life._

"I must have forgotten."

Sasha raises an eyebrow and looks at her appraisingly.

"It's okay, I can imagine you have a lot of things on your mind."

Mikasa fights the blush on her cheeks and ignores her observation.

 _I do have a lot on my mind._

Sasha lets it go, but she keeps that knowing, almost smug expression on her face.

"Anyways, I was wondering if Heichou needed anything since I'm going into town anyways, I usually stop by and ask."

The backdoor opens and this time it _is_ Levi.

"We could use more rubbing alcohol, maybe another loaf of bread if you have it," he says lightly as he goes to wash his hands from being outside.

Mikasa glances over at him, her heart skipping a beat at how casually he says it.

 _We_.

Sasha grins so big that Mikasa almost finds it unsettling.

"WELL," she says brightly, "I can bring both of those things over for you _two_. Y'know, at this house. For the both of you. Where you live."

Levi looks at Sasha like she's lost it but he doesn't say anything, clearly dismissing it as Sasha's usually eccentric demeanor.

Mikasa, on the other hand, feels like she needs to sit down.

"You're burning the toast, Mikasa," Levi says boredly, grabbing the nearly burnt bread out of the oven.

But she just stands there in front of the oven.

"You okay?" he asks, low enough that Sasha can't hear.

She nods her head.

"I'm fine."

The morning passes by relatively quickly. Sasha leaves to go run her errands but not without making at least three more references to the fact that she and Levi both live in the same place.

Mikasa helps out with the horses, but the whole time she can't stop thinking about it.

 _We._

It plays over and over in her head. It seems so daunting, so complicated despite the fact that it doesn't actually feel that way. Really it would be stranger for her to leave. Still, they haven't talked about any of this. Like everything about them, it falls into place, feels natural, like it's the only sensible course of action.

Still, a part of her feels the need to overanalyze the whole thing. It's surreal and it's the last thing she would've imagined even a year ago. So much of her life has been beyond anything she could've imagined. Her parents dying, Carla dying, joining the Survey Corps, Eren being a titan, losing both him and Armin…

 _Why haven't I learned that life is seldom what we imagine it to be?_

She doesn't know if she would say that she's happy, but she's not completely numb to the world anymore. The sunshine feels good on her skin, she can get out of bed in the morning, the air feels fresh and clean in her lungs; all things she hasn't truly felt in a long time.

It's another hot day so Mikasa throws on a floppy brimmed straw-hat because otherwise she thinks her skin will burn. She's riding a spirited palomino mare named Hana that she doesn't know the previous owner of. They decided to go out on the trails because Levi claims the different terrain is good for the horse's ligaments, but Mikasa suspects that he just wants to do something different.

Riding is more enjoyable when you aren't running for your life, so the trail ride that they're taking is nice. She neither likes nor dislikes riding horses. She's good at it because she's good at most things she tries, but she's known other people who seem to have emotional, intuitive connections with horses in a way she never really understood. They were comrades, but that was pretty much all she ever saw. Levi is good with horses. She doesn't know if this is a recent development, because she doesn't have a memory of this, but she tells him as much.

"I do alright, my younger sister was better with them. She could switch from riding to vertical maneuvering better than I ever could," he says simply.

They have moments like this every so often, comments that she can gleam a bit of his past without prying. She likes this, likes knowing about the people that were dear to him. It's easy to forget that he's also lost people when the pain she's experienced was always so fresh and raw, so sharp.

They've been riding for about an hour when Mikasa hears moving water and asks if they could go and stop for a bit because she feels tired. That's a bit of a lie because she's honestly hoping that there's a lake or a stream for her to cool off in.

Her suspicions were correct, so she ties the horse to a tree and tosses her hat to the ground.

"What are you doing?" He asks grumpily while he ties his own horse up.

She pulls off her boots, casting them aside lazily and begins to unbutton the top of her dress.

"It's hot, I want to go swimming," she pulls her dress over her head and unclasps her bra. She glances over her shoulder at him, notices how his gaze lingers on her bare back, "care to join me?"

He scoffs and crosses his arms.

"Open water like that is disgusting, especially this time of year."

She shrugs and steps out of her panties, balls them up and throws them right at him, nearly laughing at his face when he glares at her as he catches them in his hand. "Suit yourself, I'm cooling off."

She wades into the lake and immediately ducks her head underwater. When she comes up for air she sighs in relief, smoothing her hair down with her hands and enjoys the water while she floats on her back.

Levi sits on the shoreline, arms crossed and surly looking as he watches her float on her back.

 _As if sitting in your own sweat is more sanitary than swimming in a lake._

She closes her eyes, the bright sunlight still shining through her eyelids, completely relaxed as she lets enjoys the weightless sensation of floating.

Until she's grabbed sharply by the ankle and pulled underwater. She kicks wildly with little precision as she's dragged under until she breaks free and gasps for air when she comes up and wipes her eyes free of water.

She shakes her head and sees Levi standing in the water, a satisfied expression on his face as he watches her right herself.

"You bastard," she says angrily. She cups her hands the way Eren taught her to when they were kids, because two cupped hands make the biggest splashes, and splashes at him as hard as she can.

She takes the opportunity to lunge at him and dunk his head underwater.

They spend at least ten minutes like that, splashing and teasing each other in the water until they're both yelling at each other about how horrible the other is, but Mikasa can see that he's fighting a smile.

Her fingertips start to wrinkle so she wades out of the lake and grabs one of the horse blankets and spreads it out on the ground so she can lay down and close her eyes, enjoying the feeling of the sun on her skin.

"Someone could see you like that," he says blandly as he steps out of the lake.

"We're in the middle of nowhere and I don't particularly care," she says lightly, her forearm covering her eyes.

He puts on his clothes because apparently he has a bit more modesty than she does. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he grew up in the city and she grew up in the countryside.

When the sun has dried her skin, she begrudgingly puts her clothes back on.

"You've been odd today," he says, looking over to where a fish just jumped.

She shrugs.

"You're overthinking things."

"Overthinking what?"

"Things between us," he says lightly, plucking a piece of grass from the ground.

She looks away from him, already feeling her chest get tight and her throat tighten to the point she needs to swallow.

"You said we earlier," she says quietly.

"You're not planning on leaving, are you?" he asks bluntly, like he has no doubt of her answer.

"No."

He sighs.

"You know already."

"Know what?"

She glances over at him, looks at how he sits with an arm resting on his knee nonchalantly, his still wet hair falling handsomely over his brow.

"You know that what's between us is good, you said it yourself. So why complicate it, why worry about it?"

"Because it's just…it's you and me, of all people," she grumbles, looking away from him.

He scoffs. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean seriously, think about it. Can you imagine this," she gestures between the two of them, "years ago? When we were in the Survey Corps?"

"Of course not," he says sharply, "I didn't think I'd live to the end of everything."

This surprises her. Because despite the fact that she'd nearly died countless times, but except for one instance, she'd never truly thought that she wouldn't survive.

"But you said everything last night," he looks over to her, his light gray eyes sharp, his expression solemn, "you and I, we do what feels right, and for whatever reason this is what feels right. Do you want to leave? Do you want to go back by Sasha and Connie, or back to the city by Jean?"

Her stomach rolls, her chest tightening as she remembers the cold, numb, feeling that had made its home in her heart for the last handful of years. The very idea of doing either of those things is nauseating, as if the very concept is unnatural and foreign to her, like trying to write with her non-dominant hand or read something in foreign language.

"No, none of that."

"Then don't doubt yourself. You've never doubted yourself before, why do it now?"

She feels a surprising sense of calm overcome her.

She has always known not to doubt herself, known to allow the certainty she feels deep inside to guide her. It's what she has always done, the only way she's known to live since that day, so why should she do anything else?

"You're right," she says. She leans over and kisses him softly on the mouth, not because she expects anything else but because she wants to.

They pack up their things and ride back to the house that has, somehow, become the place she calls home.

* * *

Mikasa doesn't feel overwhelmed anymore. He's right that she'd said it all the night prior; that things feel right between them so why do anything to interfere with something that works, that makes her feel good.

It's still hard if she thinks about Eren. She sees his eyes in the green leaves of the trees, his laugh in the whistle of the songbirds, feels his presence in the quiet moments she has to herself.

But she knows that she has to survive. That no matter how she feels about him, no matter how much she still loves him and wishes that she were at his side that it's impossible. She has to keep living, at the very least so she can remember him, but truly because it's what he would want for her. He would want her to live instead of just scraping by like she always had, and for the first time she feels like she's close to that.

He isn't Eren, he never will be, but he understands her better than anyone ever has. He knows how she thinks, how she feels like he feels it himself. Even if parts of him are still a mystery to her, she understands what makes him him. She knows it without putting words to it, understands things about him as if they were a part of herself.

Even all those years ago, back in the Survey Corps she had trusted him with the dearest thing she knew — Eren's life, so that evening, she asks him to tell her what to do, that she wants to do whatever he asks.

So he tells her to stand still while he takes off her dress, his hands slow, almost lazy as he runs his hands teasingly over her body, his fingertips tracing lightly over her collarbone, her breasts, her stomach, her ass.

"Kneel."

She gets on her knees, the hardwood floor mildly uncomfortable as she watches him undo his belt and pull down his pants, his already hard cock springing free. She doesn't have a multitude of experiences with cocks, but she knows that she likes his; all throbbing, masculine bit of it.

He grabs her hair tightly, the sting of it nearly bringing tears to her eyes as he pulls the sensitive hairs at the nape of her neck but she likes it this way. It makes things clearer, makes every sensation feel heightened.

"Use your mouth," he demands of her.

The sound of his voice, that raspy, low, wanting, tone he only uses when they're together sends a shiver up her spine, she can't describe it with any word aside from hot.

She really does love this, the feel of his cock in her mouth, hot and heavy, the taste of precum on her tongue, the way he moves his hips mindlessly as he fucks her mouth.

He groans as she runs her tongue up the underside of his shaft, swirls her tongue over the head.

"You've always been such a cockslut," he pants, his grip on her hair even tighter than before. She remembers the first time he'd said this to her, how it had made her angry but now it makes her feel the oddest thrill.

When he starts to move too quickly, too irregularly, he pulls out of her mouth with a quick 'pop' sound.

"Get on the bed."

That glimmer of something animal in his eyes makes her feel like she's surely dripping wetness down her thighs, so much so that she clenches her thighs together and squirms.

He sees this and grabs her firmly by the wrist, pulling her from her knees and glaring at her, his eyes boring into hers.

"None of that, you don't get relief until I decide you do."

He picks her up by the waist and tosses her carelessly on the bed.

When he ties her to the bed frame it doesn't feel dangerous. Rather she wants this, wants to leap blindly into whatever they have because it's the only stable thing she's known without Eren in her life.

She knows that if she wanted to she could break free, knows that it may hurt but she could pull hard enough that she would tear the wooden frame apart, the wood splintering into tiny pieces, the leather belt he's used to tie her wrists together cracking against her wrists.

He hesitates for a moment, glancing at her, that razor sharp focus, that flow, momentarily disrupted.

"Are you sure you're okay with this?" He asks as he ties her ankle to the footboard.

"I trust you," she says simply.

She can see him react to her statement but she can't quite place what it is.

"Have you done this before?" she asks lightly.

She's never asked him anything about his prior sexual experiences, always assumed that he'd done everything he did either as a young man on his own in the Underground City or with partners doomed to die in the Survey Corps.

"Not like this."

The idea that this is new to him thrills her, makes her feel even more important than before.

He lets his tongue linger wherever he feels like, and all she can do is let him. He bites at her nipples hard enough that it makes her cry out and she's not sure if it's pleasure or pain, but she wants him to keep going until she has it fully figured out. This powerlessness sensation is so foreign to her. She can't reach him, can't grab him while he touches her but it's almost relieving. She wants it, wants this feeling of letting go, of abandoning all of her strength, all of her cares.

He kisses slowly down her abdomen, his tongue lingering on the ridges between her abdominal muscles, into her navel, over her pubic bone but not where she wants him most.

She cries out, moving her hips forward against the restraints and with a firm hand he presses her hip down onto the bed.

"Stop that," he growls.

She only whines in response, so with an open palm he hits the curved side of her ass hard enough that it leaves a red mark.

She cries out, loving the stinging sensation of it.

He glares up at her.

"You're going to tell me if you're about to come, okay?"

He's never done this before, asked her to let him know if she's going to finish, but she just utters a quiet "okay." Anything to get him to stop hesitating, to use his mouth the way she likes.

He's slow about it, teasing her as he uses his mouth and hands to make her slowly start to unravel. The sound of his mouth against her wetness alone has her panting, let alone the way he pumps his fingers inside of her, his tongue on her with just the pressure she likes until she feels like she's going to come, her legs straining against the way he has her tied up.

"I'm gonna come," she pants, her hips moving against his mouth–

Then he pulls away.

If she weren't tied up she'd be kicking him, grabbing his head and making him finish, or hell, reaching between her legs and finishing it herself. All she can really do is settle for something between a shout and a cry.

"What's wrong, Mikasa?"

"Fuck you," she whines.

He does this two more times, brings her right to the edge until she's cursing and trying to squeeze her legs together and failing until she finally begs him to let her come.

This has to be what he wanted because he's quick about it then, does everything she likes, everything he knows will get her off until she's pulling against the headboard and crying out, rocking as much as she can against his face as he lets her finish in a frenzy of pent up tension then relief.

His eyes are wide, pupils almost entirely taken over the light grey of his irises as he undoes the restraints then guides himself inside her.

She feels boneless, the blood flowing back into her wrists as he fucks her but she still grips his bicep, runs her hand up his back and into his hair. Their prior rules seem to have been set aside because he kisses her gently while he moves over her, his hand gentle yet firm as he cups her cheek.

She loves watching him finish, loves that momentary look of bliss that overcomes him; like for just a moment the world isn't so unkind, that there's something good to live for, even if it's just for a brief time.

He rolls off of her, catching his breath but she doesn't want to stop touching him so she reaches over and kisses him, pushes her tongue past his lips, presses his strong body flush against hers, wraps her arms around his waist, kissing him until she's contented and simply rests her head against his chest, listening to the vital sound of his heartbeat.

She gets up and quickly puts on her nightgown, then reclaims her spot snuggled up in his arms.

For once he looks like he may fall asleep next to her.

"You're special, Mikasa," he says so quietly she thinks she may have imagined it.

She doesn't remember the last time someone said this to her, let alone someone who actually knew her. The sentiment makes makes her feel like she could drift away into a world where all that matters is how he makes her feel, how life is simple once again.

She doesn't reply but simply shuts her eyes, the sound of his even breathing and his heartbeat the sweetest of lullabies.


	6. Chapter 6

Mikasa used to hate fall. The trees losing their leaves and preparing for the icy, lifeless winter seemed like a period of mourning. Like the trees clung to their leaves, she clung to the people that she's lost through her life. **  
**

Now she's seeing it with a new set of eyes. The crisp snap to the air invigorates her. The resplendent colors of the trees seem sharper, more vivid than they ever have before. It's a time to appreciate beauty in a moment instead of reflect upon the past. The leaves will fall and their colors will fade, but in the moment, they are perfectly, wonderfully beautiful, just as they are.

And that is how she has started to feel about her life.

For the first time in her adult life, she is not fighting to survive. She has spent so long fighting, either from the titans or from the darkness that used to be her only companion, that this feeling of contentment and security is foreign.

She can tell that a similar peace has settled over Levi, though she doesn't ask him about it. He sleeps now, still upright in the bed, but she wakes up before him sometimes.

She likes to watch him in moments like these where she's awake and he's still asleep. He frowns, even in his sleep, but she knows that's simply how his face rests. She's memorized his face by now, every frown line, his dark eyelashes, the sharp ridge of his jaw and the delicate, almost feminine curve of his nose.

There's plenty of work to be done today; Connie and Sasha are finally opening their storefront in town and they need her help, there's the usual work with the animals and the linens need to be washed, but she feels like being lazy, if only just for a moment.

So she scoots over in bed and rests her head on Levi's lap.

This must wake him though because she feels him smooth his hand over her hair gently, his fingertips on her scalp.

"Mmm," she hums and closes her eyes.

"You're like a housecat, the way you do that," he says, his voice raspy from sleep.

She nuzzles her cheek against his leg in response.

"What do you have to do today?"

"Things," she jokes.

"Oh, things," he says sarcastically.

"Mhmm," she agrees. She sits up and leans against the headboard, watching outside the bedroom window for a moment as a bird goes inside the birdhouse they made last month.

He stretches and rubs the sleep out of his eyes and she's quickly drawn to the way he looks when he does this, his muscular shoulders moving underneath his skin, his sleepshirt riding up so she can see his stomach with the light dusting of dark hair that leads down into his pants.

He smirks because he's caught her looking and raises an eyebrow at her. Not long ago this would've been exceedingly embarrassing for her, but now she just looks back at him, lets her gaze linger even more obviously on his face, his arms and every other thing she finds attractive.

She crawls over to him and puts her hands on his arms, and she closes her eyes, letting herself appreciate the way his skin feels underneath the palm of her hand. She hears him exhale shakily as she runs a hand underneath his shirt, loving the ridges of muscle on his abdomen, the way she can feel his muscles twitch at the touch of her fingertips. They kiss slowly, like they don't have an entire list of things to do today and that they have all day to sit around in bed and she thinks it's a nice thing to pretend.

He pulls her nightgown down off her shoulder and takes his time kissing his way down to her breasts, lingering wherever he can to make her sigh those breathy, contented sighs that she can tell he loves.

It's slow compared to their normal, sometimes frantic seeming sex but no less satisfying in that she still feels that same perfect feeling of belonging, that there's nothing else they should be doing in the moment.

She's thought about it many times. It's like every touch exists simultaneously in just that moment and yet it was somehow preordained by some sort of force outside of their control. Sometimes she feels like she doesn't have any other choice than to touch him, to kiss him, to feel him on every bit of her skin.

She still doesn't know why it's so good like this between them, but she knows that he feels the same, that it goes beyond simple chemistry.

Late at night about a month ago she'd caught herself wondering what sex would've been like with Eren. If Eren had wanted her the way she had wanted him, what his hands would've felt like on her body, what his kiss would've been like on her mouth.

She tried to imagine it, tried to let it sink in, but she quickly realized that she can't anymore, that she can't fantasize about him the way she'd used to. It's difficult to miss something that she never had. She doesn't know if it's simply the passage of time that is robbing her of him or if it's the fact that another man's touch has been burned onto her skin.

The only thing she can conclude is that it wouldn't have been the same as it is with Levi.

This realization left her somber for days. She'd hardly talked to Levi and certainly hadn't touched him.

She still loves Eren. Still wants him with every part of her, wishes every single day that he were still alive, if anything just to be around him, to feel his comforting presence, hold his hand, anything at all.

But she can't envision what it'd be like to be with him the way she'd imagined for so many years. Now that she knows that he'd loved Armin, there's something about it that makes her feel guilty; that she'd missed something so crucial about the person that she'd loved so dearly. Had she just been selfish, blinded by her affections for a man that had never reciprocated her feelings?

Then there's what she has with Levi.

Her former commanding officer who she'd respected but mostly tolerated at best and at worst outright disdained.

Still, now that she looks back on it she can see bits of what they have now, even then.

None of the sexual feelings, of course, but there had always been an understanding. Even back to that day when Annie had ran off with Eren, she remembers a look in his eyes, as if he had suddenly understood her.

He was a squad leader, and an excellent one at that, so she had just assumed that he was, despite his shortcomings, extremely perceptive.

Which he is. But she thinks to the war, everything that transpired in that faraway land and how they had fought together, scraped and scrambled to stay alive…they had hardly spoken, but she'd never questioned that he'd known whatever needed to be done, what they needed to do to accomplish what their goals.

She remembers the stares.

 _Ackerman? I thought they were all gone. There's two still._

And now they're still here, the two of them the only ones left.

They've only done this in the morning a handful of times, but when they do it feels so different.

He's so gentle. It's like he thinks he's still dreaming, like if he touches her too roughly that she'll disappear. It always surprises her a little; what it feels like to have his rough fingertips and callused palms touch her so tenderly.

Months ago he'd said to her that there was more to life than just survival and she hadn't quiet understood what he'd meant. Now that she has him moving over her on a crisp fall morning, every bit of his hard body pressed flush against hers, her legs wrapped around his hips and her hands twisting the sheets while she whispers his name to him while rides out her orgasm, she thinks that this has to be what he'd been talking about.

He rolls onto his side of the bed, sighing and running a hand through his hair.

Mikasa lets herself relax for a moment, resting her head on the pillows and closing her eyes, a contented smile on her face.

"I actually have a lot of things to do today," she complains, eyes still closed.

"All this freetime makes us lazy, back in the Survey Corps weekends didn't even have this many spare moments but all I want to do is stay in bed all day like a useless piece of shit."

She laughs.

"Yeah, I also wasn't jumping into your bed back then."

"Mm, I think you're onto something there," with a sudden quickness he's back on top of her, his hands trapping her wrists on the mattress, making her laugh, "I mean, why would I have wanted to leave when I could just do this all day?"

He leans down and kisses her on the mouth quickly. When he pulls away she glares up at him.

"What makes you think I would've just sat around in your bed all day naked?"

He rolls his eyes.

"It's a _fantasy_ Mikasa, that's the whole point."

Still, he rolls off of her and gets out of the bed.

"Gloomy brat," he adds before he goes to the closet and pulls out his clothes for the day.

"Shorty old man," she replies seamlessly.

She sighs and grabs the sheet to wipe herself off between her legs and he glares, but she cuts him off before he can say anything.

"I know, I know, I'm doing the sheets today!"

He pulls on his pants and tucks in his shirt.

"You're so gross about that kind of thing."

She watches him as he mindlessly pokes his belt buckle through each of the holes on his belt before he puts it to the one that fits him.

He does little things like that; odd, almost ritualistic behaviors that she's only noticed because she lives with him. She doesn't tease him about these things, knows that they're important to him in the same way that she needs her scarf and to wrap her feet up tightly in the blankets to feel calm at night.

So instead of firing back about his need for obsessive cleanliness, she just says: "I know, thanks for putting up with me."

Doesn't mean that she won't sometimes purposely mess up the stack of newspapers in the living room just to get under his skin later. Afterall, she wouldn't want him to think that he can tell her what to do.

"Like I said before, you look nice naked so it makes up for a lot of your shortcomings."

"I could say the same for you, though I think I'm definitely getting the worse deal."

He scoffs. "How's that?"

"I'm a young woman in my prime, I should be off getting married and having babies," she says flippantly.

He laughs because he knows that she's referring to the last time she'd gone into town and gotten a lecture from the grocer's wife that she'd promptly ignored.

The very idea of those two things, marriage and babies, is enough to make her feel like she's going to be sick.

"Speaking of babies," he says, clearly remembering something, "can you stop in by the veterinarian? I think Marigold's knocked up," he sighs.

"Really?!"

He nods. "She's fucking huge and she's gotten really lazy even though that leg of hers was doing better," he frowns, "I've done okay with the whole horse thing but I have no fucking clue how you're supposed to take care of a baby horse."

"Foal," she corrects while she puts on her robe.

"Right, foal. See, I have no fucking clue what I'm talking about."

"We'll figure it out if it comes to that, who knows, maybe she's just getting fat and lazy," she says lightly.

Mikasa goes to take a shower and get ready for the day. When she's finished combing her hair and drying off, she wraps herself up in the fluffy cotton towels that Levi keeps around (he has a surprising fondness for things like this, small luxuries that Mikasa never would've imagined he'd appreciate) and sees him grabbing an apple before he heads out to take care of the animals.

She'll have to leave for town before he's done, so she wants to remind him that she has to go so he doesn't wonder where she is.

"Hey, Levi, before you go out remember I have to go into town today to help Connie and Sasha with the store."

"I'd forgotten, thanks for reminding me."

It makes her feel nice that that he cares enough that he wants to know what she's up to. She also knows that he would worry if he came home and she wasn't there, even though he'd never admit it.

She saddles up Hana (avoiding Erwin's asshole horse which she knows has a name but she has forgotten it because she only ever hears Levi refer to it as 'Erwin's asshole horse,') and rides the thirty minutes it takes to get into town.

Plenty of people have automobiles now and she knows that Levi wants to get one. Maybe it's her countryside roots showing because she feels suspicious of them. They run on fuel and can break down easily, not to mention she thinks that they'd be useless in the winter considering the snow.

Despite this, she's pretty sure that Levi will show up at home with one eventually. He has a desire for fast moving things that she doesn't. He enjoys anything that can replicate what flying had been like. During the last weeks of summer they'd went out into the forest and found a waterfall with large, rocky outcroppings and with very little hesitation he'd climbed the 20 meter rock face and dove into the pool below, just because he had wanted to.

He'd called her a scaredy cat but when she'd told him that someone needed to watch in case he needed rescuing he blushed embarrassedly.

She ties up her horse and dismounts, but as she does so she feels dizzy to the point that she actually stumbles.

This has been happening for the last month and she can't place why. She doesn't feel ill, she simply feels off, which is a foreign sensation for her. It's getting to the point where she feels slightly concerned that she should schedule an appointment with a doctor.

"Hey, Mikasa!"

Mikasa shakes her head and dismisses the thought at the sound of Connie's voice.

Their storefront is modest but pretty all the same, with the words "Springer Stitching" hanging on a sign in gold letters on a forest green background.

She sets to work organizing the large swaths of fabric Connie keeps in stock, first by their type – lining, decorative, outerwear, then by color, and last by their weight.

The winter fabrics are heavy and sturdy while the summer fabrics are light and breathable. She notices the olive colored one that she'd chosen months ago for Levi and she feels a little embarrassed at the memory. She'd been so flustered by his presence, afraid that Connie and Sasha would know how they'd torn each other's clothes off on their lawn under the moonlight.

While Sasha has definitely wised up, Mikasa is still certain that Connie remains oblivious and thinks that she opts to live with Levi because she likes horses or that his house is bigger.

Sasha will make a comment here and there – "Is that a rash on your neck? I see lots of girls in town walking around with rashes like that, and Heichou too! Must be something going around," or even worse "Wow Mikasa, you're in a good mood, maybe Heichou should give Connie some pointers." (That one had made her spit out her drink.)

"Mikasa, I was thinking we could put your stuff over here in its own display, what do you think?"

Her embroidery is surprisingly popular. She finds herself stitching for a few hours each night, usually while Levi cooks dinner. Connie always emphasizes that she doesn't need to do any that she doesn't want to, but Mikasa likes the income and likes the task. It reminds her of her mother and that's comforting.

"Yeah, that sounds great, I actually had a few ideas."

Sasha entertains Elise while she and Connie continue to set up the store. Elise's first birthday is tomorrow and she and Levi are going over for a small party. The little girl has started to take clumsy first steps and it makes Mikasa smile. She looks so much like both of her parents with Sasha's big brown eyes and Connie's silly smile that it makes Mikasa's heart feel full.

After a few hours, the store is looking great. The displays are orderly and visually pleasing and in the back there's an area where Connie can work so that he doesn't have to go sit in the dumpy shed for hours anymore.

"I'll see you all tomorrow, I have a few more things to do before I head back home."

The veterinarian's office isn't far, so she just walks instead of leading her horse.

People in town have started to not only put together who she is but where she lives and who she lives with.

She's not surprised that an unmarried couple living together garners as much scrutiny as it does, but most of the townspeople treat her with an odd combination of fear and reverence. Sasha and Connie get treated more like local heroes, but she supposes that they have more approachable personalities – people send them gifts, from green colored cakes to bouquets of flowers while she and Levi, the other Survey Corps veterans that seem drawn to this small town, are treated as exactly that – other.

Mikasa is used to it. This whole _other_ thing, but it had always been because of her appearance. Her parents had hid away in the forest, fleeing their own persecution, but she doesn't feel like she spent years fighting as hard as she did for self-imposed exile, so she won't do that.

She was surprised that people didn't assume they were related though.

"A lot of people don't know my surname, I didn't know it for most of my life, so I'm not surprised people don't make that connection considering your appearance," he'd reminded her.

Something about that had saddened her, the the reminder that he'd been without anyone to care for him so young. Her childhood hadn't been an easy one, but she still remembered the love of her parents, of Carla and Dr. Jaeger.

He only has fleeting memories of his mother that he doesn't talk about and a childhood of harsh lessons taught to him by the man who'd turned out to be his uncle.

She schedules a time for tomorrow that the veterinarian will come out to check Marigold as quickly as he can because he's somewhat brusque and she's feeling tired.

 _Maybe I just need an afternoon cup of tea._

Levi must be off with the horses when she gets home, so she goes inside and makes herself a cup of tea, hoping for a bit of extra energy. While it steeps, she goes upstairs and pulls the sheets off the bed so she can wash them.

She fills up the kitchen sinks with the water as hot as it'll go and tosses the sheets in with some soap, and while they fill she goes to grab her tea. Once she's finished it, she spends the next two hours doing laundry, scrubbing with a washboard in the sink.

After she's finished hanging things to dry, Levi walks in and he's carrying a large box from outside.

"What's that?"

"It's a radio set, I ordered it about a month ago and it's finally gotten here," he says, setting down the box and opening it carefully.

"What for?"

He looks at her blankly.

"You like music, I know it's not the same but I figured after dinner we could try and catch one of those bands you like so much."

The thought he sometimes puts into making her happy never fails to surprise her. It's always something that she never realized that she'd like or wanted, and he always minimizes the amount of effort it would have taken him. A week ago she'd lost her favorite shade of lipstick and a few days later he'd "found one that looked like it" at the corner store in town. She'd made a passing comment about how she liked the smell of his aftershave and when they ran out of soap all of the new things he'd bought had that same earthy, herbal scent she'd liked so much.

She smiles at him and she can see him get uncomfortable because he feels embarrassed at how sentimental he is when permitted. Years ago it'd been impossible, when everything had been about surviving to the next day, killing one more titan, advancing further.

But it's a softer time, a peaceful era that Mikasa finds is more about these kinds of moments, these quiet, tender feelings of belonging that make you feel just as alive as escaping death in a blaze of glory.

He goes into the kitchen to make dinner while she wrings the water from the sheets with her hands and takes them outside to dry, then she goes and makes the bed with the other set of linens.

After they've done the dishes and the sun has long set, they set up the radio and, after some trial and error with the antenna, the station comes in clearly, the big band playing loud through the speakers.

"Ah!" he yells because it's so jarring when it came into focus, quickly turning the volume knob down. She laughs at his reaction and pours them both glasses of wine.

"You ever think about how fucking crazy it is that they can send music over the air and into a house?" he asks.

She laughs at the way he says it.

"I don't have a mind for that kind of thing, I usually just accept things as they are, y'know?"

He nods.

"So many people spend so much time thinking about things that could be, what should be, and that's how we get things like this," he gestures to the radio, "and we need people like that, but I'm just not one of them," he drinks from his glass and she can see the almost ever present tension in his shoulders dissipate slightly, "I've always tried to live in the moment and deal with challenges as they come because it's the only way I've been able to live with myself."

She can tell that he's remembering something, something he finds upsetting. For him, these moments come and go, errant thoughts that leave as quickly as they came, so she never asks him what he's thinking of, doesn't feel that it's her place.

Still, he always tries to live from moment to moment. He doesn't let the past consume him, and perhaps that's what she's needed most from him. For so long she was a woman who lived in the past, lived in the illusory halcyon days long ago – where she'd had Eren and Armin at her side, where she'd had her family.

Life has been cruel to her, but here she is, sitting in a warm living room, drinking wine and listening to music with a man who almost certainly loves her.

She tries not to think about it, tries to ignore the way he looks at her when he thinks she isn't paying attention, but she's always paying attention, always looking toward him.

It's too difficult for her to think about for long, too hard to remember what it was like to love someone. She still has the resolve to survive in this world and she'd been suffocating before this, but if she thinks about it she knows she'll be scared enough that she'll ruin it.

She sets down her half empty second glass of wine and stands up.

"I like this song."

He sighs and acts like it's annoying when she takes his hand in her's so they can dance. She knows better.

It feels so frivolous, so silly to be twirling around in the modest living room, barefooted on the floor but it's fun all the same.

After the first set, she feels herself get a little short on breath which is strange, but just when she wants to take a break the band starts to play a slow number. Her heart beats excitedly when he pulls her close, her cheeks feel warm when she feels his hand tightening on her waist. She leans down and rests her head on his shoulder and she feels him rest his head on her's while they move slowly to the music.

The song ends and changes to something uptempo, but he reaches to the radio and turns it off. They just stand there, her head on his shoulder and she feels his arms wrap around her and pull her close.

She isn't sure who kisses who first but the way he kisses her is different than before. His hand on her cheek, her body pulled flush against his, it's unhurried, like he could spend the next hour kissing her and be content. She can feel it, deep down somewhere inside of herself that this is somehow more than it ever has been.

They take their time making their way upstairs, kissing and touching wherever they can reach.

He slowly unbuttons the front of her dress and carefully slides it off of her shoulders. She steps out of it and he puts it on the chair in the corner of the bedroom, clearly unhurried.

But she wants to see him without his clothes, wants to touch every part of him that she's learned over the last few months.

It's like he can read her thoughts because he unbuttons his shirt and puts it with her dress, then he reaches down and takes off his undershirt. She feels mesmerized by the way his arms stretch, the way his torso bends even with a motion as simple as pulling a shirt over his head. The rest of his clothes follow until he's as naked as she is.

They spend a moment just looking at each other.

They kiss again, in that same, unhurried way, making their way towards the freshly made bed. She lays down and he spends time kissing every part of her, places she'd never even thought of; the inside of her wrist, the back of her knee, the place just behind her ear, each time prodding at whatever it is inside of her that wants him. The vulnerable, still tender part of herself that she'd thought died years ago, the part that wants him to know her, wants him to see her, wants him to love her even if she won't admit it.

It's slow and gentle in a way she didn't think either of them were capable of. The small, breathy sounds she makes surprise her but the delicate touch of his hand, the gentle feel of his mouth on her skin draws it out of her.

The way he looks at her, the way she's surely looking at him back as he moves above her, the way he whispers her name; it has her pulling him close, holding him tight because she doesn't want him to ever leave, doesn't want to lose him the way she's lost everybody else.

She knows she can't protect people, that no matter how she tries the people she loves always end up leaving her, but it's the same for him. Maybe he's different, maybe he's the only one who can promise her that he'll stay, that nothing is going to take him from her. He can swear it on his own strength, his own ability and that's perhaps the only thing she trusts as much as herself.

They're quiet after, legs and arms tangled together on the bedding, his fingers tracing idle circles on her arm while he stares up at the ceiling.

"Why are you crying?"

She blinks a couple times, feeling tears roll down her cheeks. She hadn't noticed but when he points it out she suddenly can't stop.

"Are you going to leave me?" she blurts out before she can think better of it.

"Of course not," he says quietly. He kisses the crown of her head.

"Promise me," she whispers.

"I promise."

* * *

Sasha and Connie have decorated their little home with beautiful paper ribbons and cooked a special meal for Elise's first birthday celebration. They're all so happy looking on as Elise smears cake all over her face while she clumsily tries to eat it, getting frosting everywhere including her hair.

But Mikasa feels distant. All she can think about is the night before, how she'd taken Levi's promises, taken the love he'd offered her with his body and given it back to him.

It's terrifying. They've never needed words for these kind of things but she knows how he feels, can practically hear it when she remembers how he had touched her, how he'd looked upon her.

He acts the way he always does around Sasha and Connie, begrudging acceptance of their affections with sarcasm and teasing sprinkled into conversation, but she doesn't think she can look at him quite the same after seeing him as vulnerable as he'd been the night before. The last piece of the puzzle has finally fallen into place and now she can see the big picture, the sum of parts that combine to be Levi Ackerman.

She wonders what he sees of her, how complete his picture is. If he can see her love for Eren and how it's still woven into the fabric of her soul; the piece of her that she's always going to carry around until the day she dies.

"Hey guys, why did the horse give the pony a glass of water?"

Sasha groans.

"Come on!"

"Why Connie," Sasha sighs, taking a bite of her second slice of cake.

"BECAUSE he was a little _horse_! Get it?"

Sasha groans and Levi laughs at how stupid Connie sounds. Mikasa would normally join in, but she just feels off. She doesn't know if it's from last night or the same ailment that's been troubling her and she's been ignoring for months, but she doesn't feel right.

"Are you okay?" Levi asks her while Sasha scoops extra frosting out of a bowl and feeds it to Elise and herself happily.

'I'm fine," she says shortly. He rolls his eyes – he doesn't tolerate when she gets like this as readily as others do, finds it annoying and chooses to ignore it.

"If you say so."

"Oi Heichou, can you help me lift something outside?"

He's given up on them both calling him Heichou, but Mikasa notices that he twitches a bit.

"Sasha is plenty strong, she could help you just as easily as me."

"Well yeah but, y'know, gotta give them their woman time, y'know?"

Levi stares at him blankly.

"He's right, get out of here and make yourselves useful and leave us alone," Sasha says while she grabs Elise out of her chair and fills up the sink give her a bath.

Sasha sighs wearily while she looks at the little girl, covered head to toe in her birthday cake.

"You really are an artist, aren't you?"

Elise mashes her hands further into her mouth and giggles.

They're a sweet pair, Sasha and her little girl.

"So," Sasha says it in that voice that Mikasa knows means she's going to start asking questions, or at least hinting at questions about her living arrangements, "how are things?"

Mikasa rolls her eyes and takes another bite of cake.

"The fall weather agrees with me."

Sasha grumbles something about how Mikasa is being 'no fun' but she lets it go.

Sasha finishes cleaning Elise and towels her off, rambling the whole while about something stupid Connie did the other day that Mikasa half listens to.

Mikasa gets up to help with the dishes but she stumbles and grips the back of the chair for balance while the world reorients itself.

"Are you alright?" Sasha rushes up to her and puts a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm fine," she says a bit too shortly.

"I've never seen you stumble like that, are you sure you're okay?"

Mikasa shakes her head dismissively.

"It only happens every now and then."

Sasha frowns and Mikasa can't help but be reminded of how Carla looked right before she was about to scold someone.

"Let me take a look at you," she says sternly.

Mikasa tries to brush her off and insist that she's fine but Sasha drags her back into her and Connie's bedroom and tells her to lay down on the bed.

"I'm fine," Mikasa insists irritatedly.

Sasha ignores her protests and rifles through a large canvas bag and pulls out a small flashlight.

Sasha hands Elise something to play with so that she's occupied happily, then she takes the small light and shines it in her eyes, making Mikasa squint at the sudden brightness.

"What the–"

"I don't think you have a concussion, your pupils are working just fine," she says clinically, which is strange coming from Sasha.

Mikasa tolerates her poking and prodding for a few minutes, if anything just to appease her.

"I'm fine Sasha, I told you."

"Hold your leg straight," she ignores Mikasa and grabs her foot and puts her palm flat on the bottom, "does it hurt when I press like this?"

"No, what does that even check for?"

"Appendicitis, it would probably hurt when I press like that."

"I don't have appendicitis, I've been having these dizzy spells for months, I would be dead if I had appendicitis for months."

"Months?"

Mikasa instantly regrets admitting that.

Sasha frowns.

"Lay back please."

"Sasha–"

"Just do it, one more thing and I'll leave you alone."

Mikasa says and lays back, grabbing one of the pillows to rest her head on.

Sasha pulls her dress tight across her stomach and feels around methodically, Mikasa strains to remember the word from one of Dr. Jaeger's medical books but it's escaping her.

Mikasa notices a quick flash of shock play across Sasha's face, but she hides it quickly, and for the first time since this little exam has started, Mikasa feels nervous.

"What's wrong?"

Sasha laughs nervously.

"Nothing!" she says, her voice high pitched and squeaky.

"Sasha–"

"Can you lift up your dress please?"

"What?"

"Just do it, please, I think I know what's wrong with you."

"There's nothing wrong with me–"

"You're right about that, but please."

Mikasa pulls her skirt up to her waist and frowns the whole while.

Sasha palpates (Mikasa remembers the word) her stomach and stops on her navel, like she'd been feeling for something and she's found it.

Mikasa squirms a little at her firm touch.

"You see this," Sasha says calmly, pressing firmly right around her navel, "is where your uterus is right now, whereas normally I wouldn't be able to feel it because it sits below your pubic bone."

"My….what?"

Sasha sits back and sighs as she grabs what Mikasa recognizes as a stethoscope from her bag and puts it low on her stomach. She moves it around a little bit and then stops, a peaceful, sweet expression on her face while she listens.

"Yep," she puts the stethoscope away and puts it back into her bag. "Nice and healthy sounding little heartbeat, makes that nice snappy sound that I like to hear."

Mikasa stares at her, sits up and pulls her dress back into place.

"What are you talking about?"

It's like she's underwater and that everything is muddled, her focus going in and out. Sasha's mouth is moving but she can't make sense of what she's saying.

"Mikasa," Sasha finally says, putting her hand on her shoulder and shaking her, "you're pregnant."

She opens her mouth but she can't make any words come out.

"I…what?"

"Pregnant, you know, with a baby," Sasha says sensitively.

"But…how?"

Sasha frowns.

"You know how these things work, you were in the same class when we were kids in the training corps and Hanji practically threw around prophylactics like they were balloons."

Mikasa shakes her head.

"No this…I don't bleed regularly, you know that!"

It's true, her monthly period has always been an irregular thing, so its absence for a few months didn't raise any alarm.

"I know, I remember but these things still happen, Mikasa you gotta make him pull out, y'know?"

"I…we…we weren't thinking," for the first time in this conversation she thinks about Levi and his half of his equation and she feels a quick flash of anger, but it's overwhelmed by crippling terror again.

"I…I can't be a mom, Sasha."

She's way too broken, too caught up in the past, too ruined by all of the abnormal things and far too unnatural of a person, someone who is honestly more animal than woman at this point.

Sasha sighs.

"It's far too late for anything like that, those kinds of things," she looks at her meaningfully and Mikasa recalls the hushed conversations in the Survey Corps about certain medications a woman could take to get rid of a pregnancy, "work only when it's very, very, early. You'd probably die, either from hemorrhage or an infection because you're well over halfway along."

"What?"

"Give or take a little, you should be able to feel movement soon, though you probably have and didn't know what it was, if you're not looking for it you can mistake it for indigestion initially."

Mikasa doesn't know anything about pregnancy but halfway has to be at least four or five months but she doesn't look any different, at least that she can really notice.

"I don't…I don't…"

She's not making sense, nothing is making sense and she can feel her chest tighten and her breathing feel labored. She wants to run, run somewhere far away that she doesn't know and never look back.

Sasha sighs.

"Take a few deep breaths, try in through your nose, out through your mouth."

She tries to do what Sasha says but somehow it makes things worse and she feels like she might faint, so instead she settles for bursting into tears.

"There there," Sasha says calmly, pulling her into her arms and running a gentle hand through her hair the way only a mother can, "I know that this can be scary but it's going to be okay, I'll take good care of you I promise, you're not alone."

She sobs harder at this because she can't help but feel that she is alone, she's been alone yet surrounded by people ever since Eren died. Her mind wanders back to last night, how wonderfully, blissfully easy it had been to lose herself in another person, to feel closeness with someone else. They can never go back to that now, never go back to not thinking about it because not thinking about anything is what has brought them to this point.

She hears the door open and immediately she goes back to panic.

"I need to leave," she says hastily standing up.

"Wait, Mikasa," Sasha grabs her sleeve and Mikasa reflexively jerks away, but Sasha grabs her wrist with a firmness that surprises her.

"You need to tell him."

"Don't tell me what I need to do." Her voice is low and threatening and she's sure that she's never talked to Sasha like this.

Sasha is not a meek woman though because when it comes down to it Sasha has seen just as much as she has, has risked her life and faced death in the same way.

Still, Mikasa leaves the room and storms outside, ignoring Sasha when she calls after her.

Connie and Levi are coming back from the woodpile by the shed and his gaze is immediately drawn to her, he knows that something's wrong and he runs up to her.

It's not until Levi is on the ground, grabbing his cheek and spitting blood out of his mouth that she realizes she's punched him in the face.

"Oi Mikasa what the hell?!"

"Stay away from me!"

"Mikasa his teeth don't grow back!"

The remark makes her think back to Eren, his face, his smile, his presence.

"You don't get to talk to me about Eren, none of you do!" she shouts at Sasha.

"I–what?"

"None of you understand how–"

She's cut off when Levi grips her shoulder with one hand and puts a hand on her cheek. She can see a bruise already blossoming where she'd punched him, his lip cracked and bleeding, yet his face is as calm as ever.

"MIkasa," they make eye contact and she feels like her breath has been stolen from her, that she can't speak.

She collapses and starts sobbing, crying harder than she ever has in her life against his shoulder, Connie and Sasha looking on for a moment before Sasha leads Connie inside, leaving them alone.

She cries for what feels like an eternity, until there's nothing left inside of her, nothing left for her to feel until she's numb again.

She pulls away from him and wipes her eyes messily.

"I'm knocked up," she says coldly.

His eyes widen and she watches him look her up and down, he opens his mouth to speak but he's clearly at a loss for words.

She leaves him there as he grasps for words, an endeavor as futile as one trying to catch the wind.


	7. Chapter 7

Mikasa hardly leaves the bedroom for the next month.

It starts out simply, that she just sleeps later and goes to bed earlier. Eventually this turns into waking up at noon, leaving the room to go to the bathroom, and going to bed again almost immediately after.

She doesn't speak to Levi because looking at him is too painful. She sees too much of herself in him, too much of the lonely brokenness that he simply hides better than she does for her to stand being around him. She feels too angry with both of them for allowing this to happen.

She lays on the bed, wrapped up in blankets, her limbs curled up into her body tightly. Part of her thinks maybe she could make herself disappear completely if she just makes herself as small as possible. Because she is certain that that is what she wants more than anything; more than even to see Eren again, she simply wishes that she could disappear.

She feels ashamed that she allowed herself to be so foolish as to become pregnant. She's ask herself what she'd been thinking, but she's already established that she simply was not thinking.

No, it was more than the absence of thought. It'd been a totally pure, addictive way of living where she'd followed only her basest of desires, doing whatever had felt right in the moment, whatever she had had to do to feel alive.

But now she's learning that that kind of purity, that blissful, intuitive way of living, comes at a price. It can only happen in the present moment; its inherent beauty is derived from its independance of both the past and the future.

She can't bring herself to touch her still flat stomach, can't even think about the fact that she's supposedly going to be a mother.

She hears footsteps coming up the stairs.

Levi has brought her food and water three times a day for the two weeks. The water she drinks but the food she barely touches, can't bring herself to. Without her asking he sleeps elsewhere. She's not sure how he feels, not sure if he wants to look at her or speak to her, but she can't bring herself to say anything to him.

What they've done is unfair. Bringing an innocent into a cruel and terrible world like this with two of the most aberrant people around as parents is perhaps the most terrible thing she's ever done.

Mikasa isn't sure if she's ever going to be able to forgive herself for this. She could have forgiven herself for losing Eren, even maybe accepted that she'd given herself to someone else, but this is something else entirely.

Someone knocks on the door, she expects it to be Levi so she's surprised to see not only Levi but Sasha as well, her large canvas bag in tow.

"Alright," Sasha says brightly, ignoring the fact that Mikasa's curled up under three quilts.

Sasha opens the curtains, letting the late morning light stream in and sting her eyes.

Sasha pulls the quilts from her brusquely and Mikasa shivers at how cold it is. Sasha clicks her tongue and shakes her head.

"Go sit in the chair for a second, I'm gonna make the bed, this'll be easier."

When Mikasa doesn't move, Sasha sighs again and slings Mikasa's arm over her shoulders, all but carrying her to the chair and setting her down in it.

She slumps into the chair and curls her feet underneath herself and watches blankly as Sasha changes the dirty sheets.

"Are you just going to sit there and look pretty?" she says waspishly at Levi who has just been looking on detachedly.

He jumps up with a suddenness similar to if he'd sat on something sharp to help Sasha make the bed.

"Alright, up you get," Sasha says gently but with a sternness that Mikasa simply doesn't remember Sasha possessing years ago that makes her listen.

Sasha arranges some pillows so that Mikasa feels comfortable on her back.

"You can sit down, Heichou," Sasha says absently.

"I can leave," he says shortly. Sasha glances at Mikasa, who is still staring blankly at the ceiling.

"I don't care what he does," Mikasa says, her voice raspy from disuse and cold from indifference.

"Well, there you go, you should stay, it's helpful for fathers so they can wrap their heads around the whole thing."

Levi's expression goes completely blank at the word father, but all the same he sits down in the chair, his posture tense and shoulders stiff.

"Okay," Sasha rifles through her bag, pulling out a stethoscope, a notebook with the name Ackerman scrawled across the top in neat print letters and a few glass containers that she lines up neatly on the bedside table, "let's take a proper look at everything, okay?"

Mikasa nods minutely and barely pays attention as she pulls up her nightgown and Sasha feels on her stomach, pressing here and there.

"Have you felt any movement yet?"

In the evening if she pays attention she has felt strange, jerky little movements, lighter than a summer breeze but most definitely there.

"Yes," she says shortly.

Sasha smiles. "That's good, movement should get stronger week by week from this point forward, all babies are different but you'll eventually become familiar with when yours is awake."

The idea that whatever thing inside her has its own preferences for sleep is too strange for Mikasa to wrap her mind around.

Sasha puts the stethoscope low on her stomach again and concentrates for a minute.

"About 140 beats per minute which is absolutely perfect," she says sweetly, a small smile on her face, "I'd say that I was correct before, based on fundal height and what I can discern from listening it's going to be baby time in about three months, give or take a little."

"How is that possible, she barely looks any different." His tone is irritated and disbelieving. Mikasa can't help but agree with him even if she still doesn't want to think about any of this.

"This kind of thing varies from woman to woman, though I can tell the difference at this point," Sasha looks at her up and down and Mikasa feels a strange urge to cross her arms in front of her chest.

"First time mothers often don't show their pregnancies until well over halfway, I didn't look pregnant for quite some time, and Mikasa is of a more muscular build than I am, so because of that things are, y'know, held in a little more snugly, if that makes sense, come over here if you don't believe me."

Mikasa watches as Levi gets up and stands by Sasha. His movements are awkward and timid, something she didn't think that he was capable of. It looks unnatural for him.

Levi reluctantly takes the stethoscope, his face is cool but his hand trembles ever so slightly as he puts one of the earpieces in, Sasha moves around the part on Mikasa's stomach until she finds what she's looking for.

"See right there, listen," they're quiet for a moment, "the slower rhythm is Mikasa, the faster one is a baby," she explains.

His face goes from blank to a strange, almost awed expression in the span of thirty seconds.

He hands the stethoscope back to Sasha, his countenance resolved, hands no longer shaking and he looks at Mikasa directly for the first time in a long while. She feels that once familiar spark between the two of them, a tension that is equal parts animal and emotion. She puts her rumpled nightgown back into place and props herself up on her elbows.

"Mikasa, did you want to listen?"

"No."

She can't do it, can't bring herself to acknowledge the consequences of their relationship. She still can't accept that there's more between them than the instinctive force that pulled them together initially.

She doesn't break eye contact with him, for the first time in a week she feels something besides complete despair, which is refreshing even if it's anger. She feels a quick moment of tension, that familiar but startling all the same electricity that seems to flow between the two of them that makes her feel torn between hitting him until he's unconscious and tearing off his clothes.

 _This poor child._

For not the first time she reflects on the disfunction between herself and Levi. Crippling guilt overwhelms her. It terrifies her that she could be so selfish as to allow this to happen.

Sasha clears her throat awkwardly, dispelling the moment.

"I'd like to just have a brief family history, when did you start your menstrual cycle?"

As silly as it is, Mikasa has to fight down a flush of embarrassment.

"Fourteen."

"Oh that's right I remember! That was the day the mess hall had butter but you skipped dinner because you felt sick, now I remember your cycle being irregular, but if you could guess, about how often do you bleed?"

How the hell does she remember this kind of thing?

"It depends, it's always been a bit different."

Sasha nods.

"Any pattern after the war? Extreme amounts of stress can do funny things to women, it wasn't uncommon for plenty of us to skip a month here and there, especially after expeditions because, well," Sasha laughs a little nervously, "you know."

The way Sasha refers to watching their comrades being eaten alive so casually is always a little strange.

"I think maybe every third month or so," Mikasa finally says, making sure to look anywhere but Levi sitting in his chair.

"You were your mother's only child, is that correct?" Sasha asks, a pen in hand while she writes in her notebook.

Mikasa nods, noticing the slight sting she feels at the thought of her mother but quickly ignores it.

"I know it was a long time ago, but do you recall if she'd ever lost a pregnancy or anything like that? Did your parents want more children?"

"I have no idea. I don't remember anything like that, but they…seemed happy to me, but I think that most children think their parents happy."

She thinks back to seeing Carla and Dr. Jaeger together, how they'd loved each other and yet there'd been so many secrets between the two of them, so much unknown. She doesn't doubt that they'd loved one another, but there was so much hidden between the two of them. She wonders what secrets her parents had hidden from one another, if they'd told eachother everything or had their secrets in a similar way.

"We were poor though," she remembers softly, "we had the things we needed but we were reliant upon ourselves, my mother schooled and taught me at home, my father hunted for food and we had a garden that we saved from for the winters…it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't want to be responsible for another child."

 _You're going to be responsible for another human._

She immediately dismisses the thought, trying her best not to think about it and failing, her stomach turning uncomfortably until she leans over the side of the bed and throws up on the ground.

"Oh!"

Sasha sets down her notebook and soothingly rubs between her shoulder-blades as she continues to cough and retch.

"There there," she says offering her a handkerchief and a glass of water seemingly out of nowhere. "So have you had much nausea? I'm assumed no since you didn't notice anything out order."

Mikasa thinks back and, in hindsight, recalls her sense of smell being more sensitive than normal, and perhaps feeling a little sick every now and then if she wasn't busy, but she'd usually just found something to distract herself.

"A little, here and there."

Mikasa suddenly feels tired, so tired that she thinks she could sleep for hours again even though it's barely noon. She lays back on the bed and on her side.

"Can you pee in this? I want to test your urine for protein."

Mikasa ignores her and Sasha sighs.

"That's okay," she takes a blanket and covers her up again, "get some more rest, I can get a sample later," she runs a hand soothingly through her unwashed hair, giving Mikasa a sense of maternal comfort she hasn't felt in a long time.

She can feel Levi's eyes on her, knows that he's frustrated, but he doesn't say anything when he and Sasha leave the room. They don't go far though, because Mikasa can hear them talking right outside the door.

"She's not eating, she hasn't left that room for a week to do anything besides take a piss and she won't talk to me, even if it's just to yell at me."

Levi sounds irritated, but she knows him well enough to be able to tell that he's concerned. She feels a brief moment of warmth at this but it's quickly swallowed up by the reminder of her condition, of how tired and afraid she feels.

"This kind of thing is more common than you'd think, babies can be an overwhelming prospect for even the happiest of couples, give her some time, it'll all come together, just do what you can for her."

The word couple sends her mind reeling, because even though she's never thought of them in such terms and it feels overwhelming. All she can think about is Eren and how loving him has left her without any love left to give to her own child, let alone another man. She knows that people who lose limbs can sometimes still feel them there, tingling with the phantom pain of loss and at times she feels like it's the same thing with her heart; that losing Eren killed whatever had been left of her heart, leaving her with a useless, empty space that she can still imagine is there, still pretend but never truly know what it's like to feel again.

"Do what I can for her," she can hear Levi scoff, "she's the stubbornest person I know and she wants nothing to do with me."

"You know her, it'll all be okay…besides, if there's anyone as stubborn as she is, it's you."

Sasha leaves and Mikasa isn't sure how long she spends in the bedroom, but it must be around dinner because the room is illuminated with the beautiful golden orange hues of the autumn sunset, a thing she has always loved about this room but now brings her little joy.

She hears loud footsteps outside the bedroom and the door opens roughly. Levi, his cheeks flushed and hair messy from whatever work he must have been doing outside, pulls the quilts off of her and slings her over his shoulder like she weighs nothing.

"You're not doing this anymore," he says roughly.

"Put me down," she says, but she somehow can't even find the will to fight him off like she normally would, can't even feel the normal flood of anger she experiences because things just feel too numb.

He carries her down the steps to the bathroom where he's filled the bathtub. He sets her on the ground like a child.

"Take off your clothes or I'm throwing you in with them on, you're filthy."

Maybe she's falling back on old habits, transported back to a time when she'd followed his orders even if it had only just been in battle, but she shakily takes off her sweaty nightgown and underwear, the action itself tiring her out to the point that she feels weak.

He catches her as she sways and picks her up again, this time more gently, and sets her into the warm bath. He scrubs her arms and legs with care but disinterest, clips her jagged fingernails and scrubs her hair with the earthy smelling soap that she likes so much.

She feels removed from her body, like she's watching from afar as someone else while he towels her off and takes a wide-toothed comb to her hair until it's free of a week's worth of snarls.

He hands her a new ivory-colored nightgown that she notes isn't fitted anywhere except underneath the bust, as if to accommodate an eventually round stomach and tells her to dress herself.

She does so with that same hazy feeling, like someone else is doing it for her and Mikasa is simply watching from inside.

He drags her by the hand and sits her down at the table where he's prepared all of her favorite foods, beef stew with warm, crusty bread and butter.

"Eat," he says shortly.

She looks at the food but she can't bring herself to do it, feels overwhelmed.

He frowns, the line between his brows becoming more pronounced, his jaw clenched and he takes her hand and shoves a spoon in it.

"Eat." He says again. She takes a bite but it feels like glue in her mouth. She shakes her head and sets the spoon back down.

"Look," he says lowly, his voice threatening in a way that heightens her dulled senses. "We have a lot of options here, but I can tell you right now that you, sitting up in a room feeling sorry for yourself isn't one of them."

Her eyes widen and she feels her heart start to race again, her anger fighting through the fog.

"That's what you think this is? Me feeling sorry for myself? You have no idea what I'm feeling right now–"

"Do you want to have a pissing contest on who has it worse? Because if that'll make you feel better we can do it," his tone is cold but with a sinister, barely restrained fury that she hasn't heard from him in years.

"We can split hairs about how you watched your parents get murdered as a girl or the fact that I'm the get of an underground whore who died of disease in her own piss and shit. We can pull it all apart until we're as fucking miserable on the outside as we are on the inside and we can stand here and hate ourselves for still being here when so many others are dead, but I can tell you right now that it's not going to help."

She hears the crack of her open palm across his cheek and she's momentarily satisfied, even thrilled, with the sting of pain that flashes across his face. He looks at her blankly, the edges of his mouth resting in a slight frown.

"Is that what you need?" he stretches his head to the side so that she can hear his neck make a popping sound, "Do you need to knock the shit out of me a few times so you can process whatever the hell you're thinking? Because if it is, that's fine, I'll let you go at it til I'm knocked out. It'll be boring because I'm not going to knowingly pound the shit out of the woman pregnant with my kid, so it's gonna be a one-sided kind of thing."

There's a dark, animal part of her that would love nothing more than to do it, to hit him, even break his bones just for the satisfying sense of control it gives her, to surrender completely to the energy that still rests beneath the surface of her consciousness and delve into that addictive power the both of them know so well.

The look on his face gives her pause though. He's resolved, genuinely ready for her to continue beating him until he's black and blue and that willingness makes her feel so overwhelmed with self-loathing and bitterness that she can taste it on her tongue.

He grabs her hand, firm but still gentle as he looks up at her.

"We fucked up. It's done. We can't change it, so we have to deal with the consequences because that," he points down at her stomach, "hasn't done anything wrong. It didn't ask to exist, didn't ask to have two angry, grief stricken fucks for parents but here we are. So eat."

She can't find it in her heart to care about the growing person sheltered inside her body, but she sees in his eyes that he does. So she eats, not for him or his care for a baby she doesn't know but because she hopes that maybe she can find a way to be something more than an abhorrent human-being, someone worthy of still being alive and someone worthy of being cared for.

Once she starts eating, she realizes how starving she is. It's her favorite food – a stew simmered for hours on end until the meat falls apart in tender chunks with carrots and potatoes – when she finishes he brings her more and she rips off another chunk of the crusty loaf of bread Sasha is so skilled at making and eats an entire second portion, until her stomach is full and she has to sit back in the chair to feel comfortable.

He seems satisfied with this and sets himself to cleaning up the kitchen.

"Go piss in that for Sasha, she's coming by tomorrow morning and you might not be awake," he says shortly, pointing at a small glass jar while he wipes down the countertops.

"I can get up."

He scoffs. "Just because I don't want you hiding yourself away all the time doesn't mean you don't need your sleep, just do it now so you can sleep in."

His words are rough and his demeanor irritated but there's a subtle feeling of concern that she can pick up on.

 _He's been worried this whole month._

The realization hits her hard. She's never known him to worry, he is a man of action and if there is a way for him to influence his circumstance he does it. He had to have been just as upset as she was this last month for him to have just let her sit around like that.

She's still angry, still confused about where they stand with one another but she can't help but feel endeared by the fact that he seems to care. She doesn't know how he manages it because he's lost as much as she has, has seen so many unnatural things that she wonders how he learned to care the way he seems to. It makes her feel even more inadequate and powerless.

Mikasa helps Levi do the dishes in silence. It's not the same comfortable silences that they are used to sharing, but it's not outright unbearable so she takes that as a blessing.

He sets down the last dish and glances over at her. Despite how tired he looks she still finds him handsome, his broad shoulders and slight limbs, the way his sleeves are rolled up revealing triceps dusted with dark hair and how his hair falls just so.

When she leans over and kisses him roughly she can tell he's not surprised. She shouldn't be doing this, shouldn't be allowing herself to have him this way when there's so much between them that's wrong and confusing. But it's the way that they make sense, the way that it feels easy. She drags him up the stairs to the bedroom and pulls off the new nightgown and throws it over the armchair in the corner.

They haven't had each other in over a month and it's like her body knows this. She's overwhelmed by how much she wants him, how much she needs his hands on her body.

He seems to have missed this as much as she has because the way he kisses her throat, the way he pulls her underwear down is almost frantic. She does the same, pulling off his clothes until he's bare, his hard cock straining up towards his navel.

"God you're already wet," he hisses, his fingers between her legs toying with the folds of her sex and even that has her panting, rubbing against him for more.

He looks at her, a glint of that irreverence that she's grown so fond of in his eyes and sticks his fingers in his mouth, tasting the wetness from between her legs.

It taps into something visceral, an urge she can't explain let alone control. She picks him up and throws him onto the bed. The springs in the mattress creak as she crawls over him to straddle his face. He grips her hips tightly, his long fingers clenched into her flesh as he pulls her down and moves his tongue slowly from the bottom of her opening to her clit.

"Fuck–"

She grips the headboard as she rides his face. She can hear him swallow, hear him exhale sharply for air in between her movements. She knows he loves this, knows he'd spend hours between her thighs if she'd let him so she has little concern for if he can breath easily or not.

The wet sound of his tongue, the rocking of the bedframe as she moves more and more irregularly against him as she gets close has her crying out, shouting repeated nonsense until she closes her eyes so tight she sees colors behind her eyelids and she's gripping the headboard hard enough she swears it may splinter as she comes.

She pants and rests her forearms against the wall. Levi moves from underneath her and grabs her from behind, his hands smoothing down her shoulder blades to her waist until he grips her ass.

Mikasa moves back so she's on her hands and knees. He pushes inside her in a quick, economical motion and it makes her gasp, the feel of him after so long without is too good, too overwhelming for her to keep quiet.

There's a similar tenderness that she recalls from the last time in his touch, a warmth that she can't help but take note of, but he still grips her ass harshly, pulling her into him as he thrusts into her steadily, each time punctuated with his breath.

She feels more aware of him, like she can feel every hard bit of him in a way she hadn't before and it's maddening in its intensity.

"Just like that," she sighs as he falls into a slightly harder rhythm, "please, just like that."

It takes her breath away when she comes again. She's silent as she grabs the sheets tightly, arches her back and clenches her whole body tightly. He knows her well enough, knows what her body feels like when she comes that he doesn't hold back anymore and he's grabbing at her, his chest pressed flush against her back while he finishes with a shout.

He rolls off of her and she reaches over and kisses him, pulling at his bottom lip with her teeth, running her fingertips over his scalp all because she wants to, wants to taste him, wants to feel him in the calm afterwards.

He runs a hand down her stomach, laying his palm flat just under her navel.

"I can see it now, you do look different," he murmurs.

It makes her feel uncomfortable to think about it, so she grabs his wrist and gently removes it from her stomach and gets up to put back on her nightgown and underclothes.

"I didn't mean it in a bad way," he says, propping himself up on his forearms lazily.

Mikasa nearly laughs at the notion of him worrying about her vanity, but laughter still seems like a tall order.

She shakes her head. "I just don't want to think about it."

"The nature of the situation is going to make that difficult," he says dryly.

She glares at him and crosses her arms.

"Don't give me that look," he glares back while he puts on his underwear and pajama pants, "It's going to be a lot easier if you just accept things as they are."

"We both know that I'm incapable of that."

He looks at her with a gentle mixture of sadness and understanding that makes her feel simultaneously vulnerable and completely safe in a moment; vulnerable because it scares her how much he can understand about her but safe for that fact as well.

"Life will never be easy for the two of us. We've both seen too much, lost too much," he stands up and pulls her close. She lets herself lean on him, hunching over so she can rest her head on his shoulder and take comfort in the feel of his bare shoulder against her cheek, the smell of his soap and the warmth of his embrace.

"We'll figure it out."

Mikasa thinks back to a month ago, how he'd held her after he'd loved her in this very room and promised her he wouldn't leave her.

There's a part of her that wishes he would leave, wishes he'd find something else because for as flawed as he is he deserves better than someone who doesn't remember her own heart, completely incapable of feeling anything beyond what her instincts tell her to feel about him.

But she's too selfish and too afraid of being alone to tell him as much. So when they lay down on the bed together, she lets herself fall asleep with his hands in her hair and head on his lap for the first time in over a month.

* * *

"It's too snug in the shoulders."

Sasha bites her bottom lip in thought while she looks at her appraisingly. The dress is a beautiful, soft pink color that wraps around the bust and flows loosely over her now obviously rounded stomach.

"You're more muscular than me, it looks great everywhere else, I bet Connie could let out the seam a little bit, just let me pin where we want it to fall."

"You don't have to go through that trouble."

Sasha waves a hand dismissively.

"Dresses like this aren't hard, besides he's already made you two others and I'm jealous, he's a lot better at sewing now than he was when I was pregnant."

Mikasa feels the baby make a sharp kicking movement against her ribs.

"Ooh I saw that from here!" Sasha says excitedly. She leans down, her mouth close to her belly "I'll bet you're strong like Mommy and Daddy, aren't you?"

The baby kicks again, this time against Sasha's hand.

"Oooh you know your auntie," she coos, a bright grin on her face.

 _Sasha likes it more than I do._

Sasha has encouraged her to try and talk with it but she always ends up feeling like an idiot. She tried to pick out names for both a boy and a girl, but she couldn't think of anything. She feels like even Levi has an easier time connecting with it, understanding it.

A few evenings ago she'd let him rest a hand on her stomach while it was moving around and by chance he had managed to feel it. The look on his face is burned into her memory, all fear, awe and the slightest shimmer of joy.

It's a strange part of him for her to learn, but she supposes that human life has always been the most sacred thing to him. It still hurts him that Titans were all once human, that he'd spent years slaughtering innocents is what keeps him up at night. That, and, while he never brings it up to her, Erwin's death. Her demons are different from his, but she can understand why he feels the way he does.

So, conceptually, she understands why the life that they created together is important to him. Mikasa has difficulty feeling anything beyond disinterest and guilt concerning the kicking squirming thing inside of her. Guilt for bringing an innocent party into such a cruel world when she's afraid that she doesn't have the ability to give it the motherly love it deserves and indifference to protect her already broken heart from breaking again.

Sasha reaches into her closet and pulls out a soft blue colored dress that wraps similarly to the pink one she's trying on and hands it to her.

"Don't change back into your old clothes they look uncomfortable, and you need to be as comfortable as you can this far along!" she says cheerily.

Mikasa feels like Sasha in particular has tried very hard the last few months to put on an extra veneer of excitement and cheer, as if doing so can somehow make her feel better about the situation. She supposes that in some ways it does comfort her a little. She trusts Sasha and takes solace in the fact that Sasha has had a baby, it makes her feel slightly less alone.

"Thank you Sasha, this will be much more comfortable to ride back in."

Sasha laughs.

"I almost can't believe that you're still riding horses at this point but then I remember it's you so of course you manage."

Mikasa has made a point of continuing to do all the things she normally would. She helps out with as many chores as she can, still does the laundry and helps take care of the animals though Levi won't let her near Erwin's asshole horse, afraid that she'll get kicked. She hasn't put up a fight because she hates that damn thing.

Funnily enough, they're fairly certain it's Erwin's asshole horse that knocked up Marigold, who should be having her foal any day now.

Mikasa dresses herself in the nice blue dress that Connie took the time to make for her.

"I'd like to go back home, get some things done before you come over this evening."

"Sounds good, you're a priority since it could be baby time any day now!"

Mikasa nods and pulls on the familiar green cloak that she'd worn every day for years in the past.

It's Levi's as she'd lost hers some time ago. There's something odd about it. It transports her back to a different time, a different place that she simultaneously wants to forget and wants to go back to. The daily horror, the death and destruction had been indescribable. But she had had Eren and Armin, she'd known what to do and how to live, how to survive. Now her life doesn't have rules like that, the world is far more grey with uncertainty.

Even if she doesn't like wearing it, her coat doesn't fit her anymore and she's far too practical to buy a brand new coat or cloak for the rest of her pregnancy when she only goes to Sasha's house anyways.

She would never admit it, but she has a more difficult time than she would like getting onto the horse. She makes sure that Sasha and Connie aren't watching her from the kitchen window as she stubbornly hoists herself up into the stirrups with far less grace than she's accustomed to. Still, she manages and heads towards home.

The cold wind stings against her face. It has started to snow and she can't help but think she should've made her way home a little earlier. The horse has winter shoes on and the road isn't too bad, but she's relieved when she makes it home safely.

She can hear Levi cursing about something in one of the stalls. He comes out just in time to see her attempting to dismount. She sees his eyes flash with terror as she loses her footing on some black ice on the ground. She tries to right herself as she falls but she can't turn quickly enough, her body feels clumsy and foreign to her.

Blindingly fast he catches her before she hits the ground, pulling her to him. For a moment she can't help but find him so beautiful, the way his quick, lithe body cuts through the air to her nothing less than perfection.

"Fuck you're gonna crack your head open! Just ask if you need help with something!"

Until he opens his mouth.

She huffs and pulls away from him, crossing her arms, ignoring his very legitimate concern.

"What are you doing out here?" she asks.

He gives her one last withering look then looks towards Marigold's stall.

"Marigold's acting funny, I think she's gonna have her foal soon."

He glances down at her covered stomach briefly, something that he's been doing for the last few months now and sighs.

"Let's go inside, I want to clean up before Sasha comes over," he reaches for her arm and she glares.

"I can walk myself."

"Shut the fuck up and take my arm, it's icy out and you waddle like a duck nowadays so–"

She slugs him hard on his shoulder, making him wince.

But she can't argue with him considering she nearly cracked her head on the ground a moment ago, so she takes him by the arm herself and starts to walk towards the house.

The pathway is shoveled clear of snow, a new task that Levi has taken to obsessing over nearly hourly, almost around the clock. He has been sleeping less than he used to, but she doesn't sleep much either considering she's peeing what feels like every hour.

She simultaneously wants this child to never make an appearance and get out of her as quickly as possible. She wants her body back, wants to stop feeling clumsy and awkward, but she doesn't want to be a mother.

She hangs up the green cloak by the hearth, watching the snow melt off the edges and drip onto the floor.

"That's a new dress."

She grunts in agreement as she takes off her wet stockings. She feels him come up behind her and wrap an arm around her waist, his breath on her neck.

"You look nice," he says lowly.

She nearly rolls her eyes. Her hair's a mess from the ride over, her body somewhat clammy and cold from the air and she's wet from trudging through the snow.

"Sasha's coming over soon," she says warningly.

"We can be quick."

She sighs.

"I honestly don't feel like it."

For the first time in their relationship the very notion of sex is completely unappealing. She feels huge, tired and she's sure that having sex at this point may feel more like scaling a mountain to him.

He has different opinions on the matter, but she doesn't particularly care to hear them and he knows that.

 _He has perfectly fine hands he can use himself._

"That's okay."

He smooths his hands down her arms and lingers for a moment before he pulls away to go tidy up before Sasha arrives.

The sun is already setting below the horizon by the time Sasha knocks on the front door.

"Hello," she says in a cheery, almost sing-song voice. Mikasa finds it slightly amusing that even though they've known each other for well over a decade Sasha maintains something of a professional air about her check-ups.

Mikasa is used to this routine by now. She pulls up her dress so Sasha can measure her stomach.

She presses here and there and nods.

"Baby is still head down, you're such a smart baby, you know the way out," she says cheerily, but then takes a more clinical tone, "are you feeling any contractions?"

Mikasa frowns. "I have no idea what that would feel like."

"Well, does your stomach ever just get hard, y'know like a rock?"

"Maybe?"

"Labor pains feel different to every woman. Some experience it simply as a tightening sensation, others as back pain…it will start out mild. There are signs that baby is really on the way though. Vomiting, bloody discharge, if your waters break…if any of these happens please call me and I'll be over to check up on you," Sasha glances at them both appraisingly, a brief moment of worry that disappears as quickly as it came.

"It's messy business, having babies," she sighs. Mikasa can hear a bit of her rural accent the way she says it. "Have you given much thought to it? I don't mean to scare you, but it's a trial. Any questions about what to expect?"

Levi scoffs. "She has a pain threshold higher than the walls."

Sasha looks at him glibly.

"Labor pains are different. Women have better outcomes when they prepare themselves for the reality that they will spend seemingly endless hours in pain," Sasha says seriously.

Very often Mikasa finds herself feeling like a child around Sasha. She has a worldliness that she'd never noticed before and speaks of things only experience can teach.

"My mother had me, and her mother before, so I can't imagine I will be any different," Mikasa replies.

Sasha smiles a little, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "That's the spirit, and I'll be with you the whole time."

Mikasa feels so disconnected from this whole process, like she's just along for the ride in some sort of bizarre science experiment and she says as much.

Sasha laughs a little. "Well, you're not wrong, our bodies know how to have babies without us telling them what to do and babies know how to be born without us telling them how to do it," she pauses for a moment, "that being said, I would say that you could expect to have this one anytime in the next few weeks. Are you tired of being pregnant yet?"

"Yes," She blurts out emphatically without thinking.

She hardly sleeps, can't eat more than a few spoonfuls of anything at a time without her chest burning and, as Levi so eloquently pointed out, she waddles like a duck.

"Well, there are things you can do to try and get things moving along, most of them are all in good fun but they keep you from going crazy. Some mothers swear by red-raspberry leaf tea, others say if you press on certain areas of your feet…" Sasha glances over at Levi who is watching the whole exam impassively. She has a mischievous expression on her face, "or there's always the fun way, the way the baby got there in the first place."

It takes him a moment, but when he realizes what Sasha is saying Levi's cheeks flush a bright red, his jaw clenched.

"I'm telling you, if you really want this baby out it's the way to go a few times and Elise was here like that!" she snaps her fingers for emphasis, then looks at the both of them as packs away her things. "But you have to make sure that, y'know, both of you finish," she leers, raising an eyebrow.

Levi turns red from his hairline down to his neck. For being a fully grown man about to be a father, he looks close to fainting at the notion of getting sex advice from Sasha.

"Alright it's time you leave," Levi says all but chasing her out of the house, but not before Sasha can add "also nipple stimulation!"

"Don't get any ideas," she says dryly, paging through her favorite fashion magazine, her feet lazily propped up on the ottoman as she sits on the couch.

He glares at her, cheeks still red but doesn't say anything as he goes to stoke the fire.

Their living room is something of a mess lately because she's started sleeping on an improvised bed of down comforters on the floor. A few weeks ago during one of her many nighttime trips to the bathroom she'd fallen down the stairs to the bathroom. She hadn't hurt herself beyond a rolled ankle and some bruises but Levi had immediately insisted that she stop staying up there.

Of course they'd argued about it, but eventually she acquiesced. She's stubborn, but she doesn't feel like breaking her neck falling down a flight of stairs because after everything she's survived that would be silly.

"How miserable are you? I can go into town and get some of that tea that Sasha was talking about."

She looks outside at the snow coming down mercilessly.

"I don't want you to go out in this weather, I'll be fine. Besides, it's not like a cup of tea is going to start my labor pains instantly."

He crosses his arms and glances outside. "I've been out in worse."

"I know you have, but there's no need for it." She won't tell him, but she would worry.

He grabs a book and sits in his armchair to read but she catches him stealing glances at her the entire time.

"I'm not going to spontaneously give birth," she finally says after getting irritated.

"I need something to do or I'm going to go crazy."

She throws a tub of lotion at him.

"Fine, rub my feet."

She's not really surprised when he gets up and sets to the task she's given him, but all the same it feels quite luxurious having someone massage her feet and calves while she sits and reads a magazine.

"Your ankles are swollen.'

"I am well aware of how little I resemble myself right now, thank you for the reminder."

"That's not what I meant, you're walking too much you should be resting."

"I'm fine."

"You know that women do die during childbirth, right?"

Mikasa shrugs. "People die all the time."

Truth be told, she has tried to think as little as possible about childbirth. She remembers when she'd been with the Jaegers that it'd been an event when a woman's labor pains started. You could often hear her wails from down the street. Everyone would wait with baited breath, hoping that both mother and baby would make it, and more often than not they did.

He glares, knowing that she's being intentionally difficult.

"I'm sick of your fussing, so I've changed my mind," she grabs him by his shirt, pulls him up onto the couch and switches their positions so she's straddling him, "we're getting this thing out."

She unbuttons his pants and strokes him in a no nonsense fashion until he's all the way hard. She quickly pulls off his clothes and throws them to the ground. Standing up somewhat clumsily and pulls off her clothes.

The skin of her stomach is stretched tightly with angry looking red marks creeping up her sides. He looks at her with wide eyes, pupils blown and hands twitching to touch her, so it's clearly not a deterrent for him. She isn't a particularly vain person but the way he looks at her with such blatant desire has always shaken her. He's an odd man, so passive and indifferent seeming in some moments and passionate, volatile and intense in others.

It hurts a little when she sinks herself down onto him, both because she's not wet enough and because she feels more sensitive than normal.

It's awkward and frustrating with the fleeting moments of her pleasure being muted by the clumsiness of her movement, the distance her large stomach puts between them and the hypersensitivity she feels. For the first time she wishes that he would just finish so they could be done and she can go to sleep.

"Let's try something different."

Without any warning, he lifts her off of him and stands up.

"Lean over the ottoman."

She looks at him skeptically but rests her weight on her forearms all the same.

He puts his fingers between her legs gently, dipping a finger inside carefully. He leans over and kisses her where her neck meets her shoulder. He slowly moves up to her ear and takes the lobe of it into his mouth, biting it softly making her gasp.

He's had her from behind like this before, but it's always been rough, almost violent in its intensity. The way he lets his touch linger on her waist, presses kisses against the juncture of her neck as he moves behind fans the flames inside of her, the part of her that always wants him no matter how much she tries to deny it. She clenches her hands and twists her body so she can pull his mouth to hers and kiss him slowly because she needs to. Needs to feel the scrape of his teeth on her lip, the closeness of his bare skin against hers.

He groans against her mouth and she knows he's trying not to finish before her. He reaches around and touches her more gently than he has in the past because he knows she's been more sensitive the last few months but it's enough to overwhelm her completely until she's moaning into his mouth and pulling at his hair while she comes.

He wipes the sweat from his brow and sighs. Even after sex it feels impossible to relax. She tries not to think about it, but she knows that they're both at a critical juncture in their lives, that everything is going to change after she has this baby and it's terrifying. If she thinks about it too long she feels so anxious that it's hard to accomplish anything, so she avoids it.

But she feels it kicking inside of her, she can imagine it rolling its tiny shoulders, stretching little legs as it settles down to sleep, (because Sasha has told her they wake and sleep just like grown people).

She wipes herself off with a towel and pulls back on her nightgown with a weary sigh. She feels tired of all of this.

Levi goes outside to obsessively shovel the front sidewalk despite the fact that it'll be covered in an hour, but she doesn't question him because she understands that he does whatever he needs to to cope with the situation.

She pulls down the covers and falls into a fitful sleep, the firelight casting dancing shadows on the floor.

It's surely deep into the night when she wakes up again to pee, so she gets up and sleepily stumbles to the bathroom, but not without noting that Levi still isn't in his chair asleep where he should be.

She can't shake this feeling of being off. Her stomach hurts and she doesn't feel well. After she pees, she can't go back to sleep even though she feels tired so she settles for pacing around, wondering where her insomniac housemate is.

He comes in after about half an hour, cheeks flushed from the cold outside.

"Are you okay?"

"What are you doing awake?"

He frowns. He hates when she evades questions.

"We have a new horse now," he says boredly.

"Oh, that's good."

"What are you doing?"

She glances downward and bites the inside of her cheek stubbornly, feeling like a child being interrogated about unfinished homework.

"I feel funny," she finally blurts out.

"Is it…?"

His implication is obvious, but it makes her irritated.

"How the hell am I supposed to know, I've never–" she waves her hand dismissively. So much between them is unclear, words definitely not either of their strong suits but he understands her meaning.

He looks concerned, so she sighs, feeling the slightest bit of guilt for making him worry.

"I don't know, it's supposed to hurt, I'm just uncomfortable," she says quietly.

"Do you want me to draw you a bath?"

She nods shortly, thinking about how nice the weightless feeling of a bath sounds.

Mikasa takes off her nightgown and lets herself sink into the water, warm but not hot which is her preference as of late, enjoying the smell of the soap and the relief on her back.

He turns to leave the bathroom and she remembers the time they'd taken a bath together; how they'd let their legs tangle together in the water and talked until it had cooled.

"Wait," she says.

He glances over at his shoulder expectantly.

"Stay."

She doesn't want to be alone with her own thoughts right now. He looks a little surprised, and she can't blame him. Since she'd found out about her pregnancy, she's kept him at a distance, only allowing him close if they were having sex or if she needed him to do something for her.

She takes up too much space for both of them to sit in the bath, but he sighs, folds up a towel on the stone floor and sits down next to the tub.

They're quiet for a minute.

"Can we talk about something? Anything," she finally says. This is unlike her, they normally are perfectly comfortable with silence, but there's so much unsaid between them, so much distance between the two of them for two people so intimately tied together that she needs to hear his thoughts, if anything to keep her own away.

"I talked to Hanji yesterday."

"How is she?"

"Says she finished her research on us and that she wants to come out and talk to us about it after the baby's here," he smiles softly, "she's all excited. About the kid, that is."

Mikasa runs a hand over her stomach and sighs while she feels that same, tight feeling that woke her again. It's uncomfortable but it passes, easy to ignore.

"Everyone seems to be excited except us," she says darkly.

He shrugs.

"I'm excited in my own way."

She raises an eyebrow at him, a little surprised.

"Of course I'm as nervous as anyone sane is, but things could be worse."

She laughs darkly. "Speak for yourself."

"What, just because we're not like Sasha and Connie things have to be miserable?"

"It's not, you're not…it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me," she says uncomfortably.

 _I don't know if I can love this baby._

She doesn't say it out loud but she knows that he knows what she's thinking because that's just the way it always is between the two of them.

"I wish that you could see yourself as you are, the way I do," he looks at her, his normally cold gaze warm with affection.

 _Affection towards me._

She's longed for someone to look at her like that for so, so, long that she'd almost forgotten what she wanted and simply focused on the fact that she didn't have it. She reaches out and runs a thumb along his cheek.

"Tell me then," she whispers.

It's childish and needy,

He looks away and she can't help but smile at the embarrassed flush on his cheeks and how it makes him look almost boyish.

"You're so afraid that you're going to love this thing too much."

He leans into her touch and sighs.

"And you're right. People either love too much or not enough, there's no in between. You're gonna love it so much it feels like you'll die. But that's what's so good about you. You love too much in a shitty world, no matter how hard you try not to."

She's never heard him speak of her like that, never heard him put his thoughts to words. It's overwhelming and she blinks away tears quickly. She's so afraid of what's to come, of letting herself love again that it shakes her to the core of who she is. For a moment, she feels like maybe if she could believe that she's capable of seeing what he sees that maybe things will turn out okay, even if that seems impossible.

"I hope you're right, Levi."

They talk about mundane things – everything from the new horse born earlier in the evening to the neatly folded diapers they have sitting in the top dresser drawer – until the bathwater cools and the sun is rising over the horizon. For the first time in months things feel easy between them again and it makes her heart feel lighter and her spirit calmer.

She stands and towels herself off, then puts on her nightgown. For the first time she feels it. A shocking, almost startling sensation of pain that makes her forget whatever words she was about to say from her and makes her eyes widen in surprise.

It passes and she breathes in shakily.

"Should I call Sasha?"

She shakes her head.

"No. Just wait a little longer, I don't want to bother her."

He sighs irritatedly.

"It's her job."

"Just do what I say, okay?"

For the next hour, Mikasa paces around, trying and failing to feel comfortable, but the pain is manageable. She tries to breathe, she grips the edge of the table as each pain comes and thinks that, while unpleasant, the pains of childbirth have been grossly overblown.

She feels liquid creeping down her leg and looks down, and for a moment she thinks that she's peed on the ground without meaning to. However, she remembers that Sasha had mentioned something about this, about how babies float in water inside of their mothers and that it ruptures when a baby is on the way.

It hits her in full force that this is it. Up until now, Mikasa had almost been waiting for it all to stop, for everything to be a false alarm and that it'd come later.

The next pain is so intense that she cries out, mostly out of surprise, and her knees buckle while she holds on to the dining table chair.

She distantly notices Levi grab the telephone, but the pain swells in intensity until it's all she can think about, all she can focus on as it steals the breath from her lungs.

The pain subsides, but all she can think about is that another one is going to come, and then another, and then another, and eventually, a baby.

 _Why did I let this happen? How could I have been so foolish?_

She holds back tears, wishing that she weren't such a fool, that Eren was alive, that she lived up to the person that Levi thought she was or that she was fit to be a parent.

"Sasha is on her way," Levi says to her in what she can tell is an attempt at sounding calm, but she feels so far away from him, so distant that he may as well not be there. She feels another pain and bites back a whimper.

By the time Sasha arrives, Mikasa isn't sure if it's been minutes or hours since the pain increased, but it's completely irrelevant. The pain feels closer and closer together.

"How long has she been like this?"

"Pacing around like a caged animal, you mean?"

Sasha groans. "Nevermind, go get me hot water and some wash rags," she directs her attention to Mikasa and smiles at her, eyes bright and calming.

"Look at you," Sasha says sweetly, grabbing Mikasa's hand and soothingly as another pain overwhelms her. She whimpers and feels tears start to well up in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she cries, her breath shaky and hand gripping hers tightly.

"Shhh, don't be sorry, you're just fine."

Sasha has her lay down so she can examine her, and Mikasa feels her body racked by another pain, this one stronger and longer than all the previous ones.

She bites down on the inside of her cheek so hard that it bleeds as she tries not to cry out because it wounds her pride, but as the pain swells it feels like it's consuming her, like all she's going to know is this pain forever and she can't help but let out a quiet whimper.

"Just let it pass, you're doing great, try to breathe," Sasha says to her calmly.

It ends, but Mikasa still feels on edge. She remembers the pain, knows that it's going to come again. She wants to run away, wants to leave but she can't because what's hurting her is _her._

"Breathe, rest while you can," Sasha looks over at Levi, who Mikasa dimly notes has turned paler than normal.

"We have a little while to go still, but it's going to be time sooner rather than later."

For the next hour Sasha helps her deal with the pain. She presses on her back, walks around with her, whispers calming encouragement to her through each pain and comfort through the minutes in between.

Mikasa is dimly aware of Levi, who is silent as he watches her pace around like an animal, his expression drawn, posture tense and jaw clenched as if he's waiting to be attacked.

The next pain comes, but it's different than everything that came before. It's bewildering, absolutely stunning in its intensity, so much so that it steals the breath from her lungs, leaving her gasping for air.

It lasts longer than any of the previous pains and she feels her vision swim.

"Breathe, Mikasa, you need to breathe," Sasha says, but she can't, and the world goes black for a quick moment, her head lolling to the side but the pain ends and she gasps for breath.

She expects a break, but after a brief moment it happens again, stronger and worse than before, making her cry out and grab Sasha's hand.

Sasha bears the force of her grip calmly, but when the pain ends Sasha pulls away, shaking her hand to get the blood back into it.

"If you're going to be here, be useful and hold her hand," she says shortly.

Sasha has expressed frequently that she finds men a useless burden during childbirth but shrugged and told Levi he can stay as long as he can stomach.

Mikasa lays on her side, catching her breath for a minute, the world disorienting and spinning. She barely catches her breath and it happens again and this time she reaches for Levi's arm and grabs so hard she's genuinely surprised that his bones don't break. She feels like she's standing next to an open flame, her skin red and sweaty while the pain courses through her body.

The pain lets up for a brief moment, then starts again.

"It won't stop, it's not stopping," she sobs finally, her resolve wearing thinner and thinner.

Mikasa isn't sure exactly what's happening at this point. The pain isn't stopping anymore, there's no break anymore. Sasha keeps moving her around even though her limbs feel like lead. The pain is intense enough that she almost feels numb to it, transported to another place outside where she can't feel it anymore, leaving her alone with her thoughts, her fear.

"I want my mother, I want Carla!" she sobs, on her hands and knees, looking up at the ceiling, as if somehow from above one of them will appear before her to comfort her, to make it stop, to end it all, "I want Carla, _please_."

"There's something wrong, why is she acting like this?"

When Levi speaks it feels distant, like he's far away even though he's right next to her.

"Because she's about to have a baby," Sasha says shortly as she moves Mikasa into an upright position.

"I've seen her fly around killing shit with a concussion and broken ribs, she'd normally rather bite through an iron rod than show that she's in pain but she's crying out for a bunch of dead people, if you're saying–"

He's cut off when Sasha slaps him hard across the face. He's so stunned that he doesn't even reach up to his cheek, the red outline of her open hand forming on his face.

"This is _normal_ , childbirth is difficult even for a woman like Mikasa. Unless you are going to transform into her mother or summon the spirit of Carla Jaeger, you need to shut the hell up or _leave_!"

He considers her words and looks like he may do just that until Mikasa throws her head back and groans, her voice low and cracking.

"I can't do this, I'm not ready, I'm not ready for it to be here, it has to stay inside, I can't save anyone, everyone leaves me" she whispers.

Levi shakes his head, snapping out of his reverie.

"I'm not going anywhere." He grabs her hand and for a quick moment she looks at him, the fear in her eyes reflected in his own, "let him come."

 _Him._

"You don't know if it's a boy," she says stubbornly, a brief moment of clarity cutting through the pain.

He shrugs. "If I'm wrong you can say I told you so, I've just have a feeling."

He wipes her brow with a rag and laces his fingers with hers and somehow she feels like he's sharing his strength with her. It fills her up, swells in her chest until she feels like she has the resolve to go on.

She's still afraid, terrified, even, but all she gan do is accept whatever is to come.

When she finally lets go, it's that same surreal, animal feeling that she's felt so many times before, her body simply doing a task that it knows how to do better than she could ever tell it to. Like flying through the air, like slashing a titan's nape, like dodging a blow, it's intuitive.

Everything is quiet, her breath, Sasha's soft words of instruction and encouragement as their son is born. He's a crying, misshapen red thing that Sasha places on her chest.

There's a certain amount of delirium, an insane, disorienting feeling of switching from excruciating pain to complete and utter relief like she's never experienced before.

Her hands are shaking as the small lump of a human finds its way to her breast, her head falling backwards against Levi's chest.

"Good work Mikasa," Sasha says proudly after she has finished tending to her.

Sasha takes the baby and weighs him, a small but healthy thing with a head of patchy black hair and grey eyes. Sasha dresses him and swaddles him tightly in a blanket that she'd made herself and hands him to her again.

He looks up at her with ancient seeming eyes, grey and full of something she can't put words to.

"He knows his mama," Sasha says kindly. She glances at Levi. "I'm going to go clean up, I'll be back in a bit to check up on you, I'll be in the kitchen."

They're alone now, the three of them. The sun has already set on their son's birthday, the dark, snowy night here again.

Mikasa watches Levi as he takes her red scarf, unfurls it and wraps it around her neck, the frayed red end draping over the baby. She feels Eren's presence, feels him here in the room. She can hear his voice with a clarity that overwhelms her.

 _It's warm, isn't it?_

The words echo from a long time ago on that fateful day, so distant yet so clear in her mind.

"You did well," Levi presses a kiss onto her brow.

 _I'll wrap that around you, as many times as you want. Now and forever._

Levi gently tucks the end of it underneath the tiny bundle of sleeping baby in her arms, the worn red threads connecting the three of them for the span of a heartbeat until he rests a hand on her shoulder and looks down at the both of them.

"If you want to name him Eren, we can," he says so quietly she's not sure if she's imagined it.

She looks up at him, his eyes filled with so much she can't explain but only feel, something that falls into place inside of her heart, overcoming her until all she feels is warmth, protection, and a love that she's never experienced in her life.

Her love for Eren is a burden that only she should have to bear, a bond that she will always carry with her all the same, but her's alone.

Something about it feels less heavy now, her love for that boy who wrapped a scarf around her all those years ago. It's still there, imprinted upon her heart, her soul and will be until she dies. Maybe even after for all she knows, but her heart feels big enough to shoulder this burden in a way that she's never experienced before.

She looks down at the sleeping baby wrapped up in her arms and her scarf. With tears streaming down her face, she shakes her head no.

"I think I have room in my heart to love others now."

She doesn't say it. Words fall short between the two of them, they always have. But in the quiet between them she feels it. She feels it like the calm before lightning strike, like the deep breath before diving into water and as vital as heartbeats making blood flow through veins. She has avoided it, ignored how he looks at her, what he feels for her.

She's not afraid anymore. She lets it overwhelm her, this feeling between them until she's sure that it's there, right on what was once the remnant of her phantom heart.

For the first time she allows herself to look back at him.


	8. Epilogue

Mikasa ignores the brightness of the rising summer sun from behind her closed eyelids by throwing an arm around Levi and burrowing into the space between his neck and his pillow. Her half awake mind vaguely remembers that he finds the way she does this strange but she doesn't really care.

She loves these moments between wakefulness and her dreams, the hazy intersection between reality and fantasy seeming almost limitless in its possibilities.

Levi hums in his sleep and shifts himself closer to her.

Right as she's about to fall back asleep, she hears the telltale sound of footsteps up the stairs.

 _No, no, no,_ she thinks to herself as she hears the bedroom door creak open.

"MOM, DAD! GET UP! MY NEW COMIC COMES OUT TODAY!"

"Maybe if we ignore him he'll go away," Levi murmurs as he rolls onto his stomach and buries his face into his pillow.

The last time they ignored him, he'd ended up covering the entire kitchen in flour and broken a dozen eggs on the floor trying to make breakfast so Mikasa knows that's not an option.

"Moooooooommmmmm," he whines.

"Mom and Dad are still sleeping," Mikasa says groggily, "go do your chores."

Thinking he's left Mikasa almost falls back to sleep.

"Mom," Jacob shout whispers into her ear.

"Ah!" she jumps, surprised at her son's presence hovering over her.

"I want you to get up!"

She sighs and resigns herself to getting out of bed. She sits up quickly and scoops him into her arms, which is becoming more and more difficult since he's nearly eight and growing like a weed. Still, she pulls up his shirt and blows a raspberry on his stomach making him screech with laughter.

"Fine, you win, but let your Father sleep, he needs his rest."

"Put me down! Put me down!" He laughs as he kicks his arms and legs.

She carries the wiggling, laughing slip of a boy downstairs and to the kitchen where she puts him to work helping her measure flour for pancakes and water for coffee.

Jacob likes to help with breakfast. He's an enthusiastic but helpful child, his blue-grey eyes focused intently on measuring the perfect amount of water for the coffee.

By the time she's finished, Levi has dragged himself out of bed for breakfast, though he still looks like he would rather be in bed.

"You didn't have to get up," she says wryly.

"You two are so loud, nobody could sleep through that," he says as he opens yesterday's newspaper.

Jacob happily eats his pancakes, all the while excitedly telling his parents his plans for the day.

"I want to show Elise my new Detective James comic right away after I get it," he says seriously because heaven forbid Elise Springer wait a moment for Jacob to show her their mutually adored comic. "Then I want to go to the Springer house after we're done in town because Elise said two days ago that her mom is making a chocolate cake, can I go please, please, please?"

Mikasa has wondered where he gets all that energy and excitement from. He very often reminds her of Eren. He has dark, scruffy hair and is pale like both herself and Levi, of course, but his demeanor is rather different from theirs. He feels so passionately, so strongly that sometimes it makes his body shake with excitement.

"You should ask them to build you a bedroom at their house, you may as well stay there with how often you want to visit," Levi says dryly as he pages through the news.

"That's because they're more fun," he murmurs under his breath while he stabs another slice of pancake.

"Yeah yeah, don't think I don't know about how Sasha feeds you frosting by the spoonful," Mikasa says disapprovingly. Jacob sits up straight and puts on a brief facade of respect, clearly trying to get what he wants.

"But can I go get my comic then go to the store to show Elise?" he asks again.

Mikasa sighs. "Once you finish your chores, then you can ride into town and abandon us for your preferred family."

Jacob ignores her sarcasm and does his chores in what seems like record time so he can collect his monthly allowance (that he promptly spends on his comic), and take his bike into town. Biking alone to town is a new privilege that he's quite proud of.

"Hey, Dad," he says while he slings his backpack over his shoulder.

"Hmm?"

"In the chest at the foot of the bed–"

Mikasa's pulse quickens slightly and she clenches her jaw. She remembers what's hidden there.

"You're not supposed to dig through things in our room," Levi reprimands.

"I know, I know!" he says warily, clearly trying to avoid anything that may prevent him from going out to get his comic book, "but I was changing my sheets like I was supposed to and there weren't any clean ones where they normally are, and I know you and mom keep your sheets in that trunk. I didn't find more sheets but at the bottom there's all these weird notebooks and papers that say our last name–"

"Did you read it?" Levi asks sternly enough that Mikasa even finds it unnerving. Jacob's eyes go wide and he shakes his head.

"No, no, I didn't, promise," he laughs a little nervously, "Well, except the first page and I saw that it was Ms. Hanji's notebook. Is it a science experiment or something? Is it about your parents? Elise has a grandparent and I know I don't but–"

Mikasa rests a hand on his shoulder gently, trying to seem calmer than she is.

"You're not in trouble. Those are just records from when your Father and I were in the military. Since Hanji was in charge, she kept notebooks like that on all of her subordinates," she lies smoothly. "I'm surprised your Dad hasn't thrown them out, you know how much he hates clutter!" she laughs.

Mikasa and Levi share a glance that clearly says we'll discuss this later. Jacob doesn't notice this as he's too relieved he's not in trouble.

He hops on his bicycle with a hasty goodbye and pedals madly to the end of the drive and down the road, his excitement radiating off of him the whole while. The road leading to town curves, and Mikasa always watches him pedal his bike to the curve, until she can't see him any more.

She sighs.

"He'll be fine," Levi leans up against the post on their porch, his arms crossed and feet bare in his pajamas.

"I'll never stop watching, I'll be looking after him until the curve when he's a man," she says quietly, her voice tinged with the bittersweet feeling of a mother watching their child grow.

She remembers the early hazy days of motherhood with a surprising clarity. The sleep deprivation had been a little shocking and the crying frustrating, but in many ways she can't recall a happier time; it'd been just her and Levi taking care of Jacob in the dead of winter.

Well, truly it had been her taking care of Jacob and Levi taking care of her. In those early days a baby truly only wants their mother, and the trials of childbirth had left her feeling weaker than she would've expected.

How she had ever doubted her ability to love her son will always perplex her. She closes her eyes for a moment, letting the warm summer breeze blow across her face and she can remember what he'd looked like all those years ago: tiny fisted hands, squishy little feet and big blue-grey eyes. She can remember the way he would drift off to sleep at her breast, his whole body relaxing in a way that only one who knows nothing of the world's cruelty can, how it had made her heart swell with so much love, so much feeling she was unsure it was possible.

 _You're gonna love it so much it feels like you'll die._

Levi had been right about that. And it had scared her, still does because loving someone that much means that losing them may kill you.

But she reminds herself there's no reason to think she'll lose him. Over and over again, and each time she believes it more and more; that Jacob is safe, happy and whole in this life they've created.

She opens her eyes and glances over to Levi.

"I'd bet money that he asks to stay over with Sasha and Connie."

"Probably," she agrees, still looking far down the road.

The research Jacob accidentally found is still nagging at her. Despite this, they finish their morning coffee together on the porch in silence, the warm summer breeze carrying birdsong and the scent of grass the only thing they need in the moment.

"I'll go take care of the horses and over lunch we can discuss Jacob's discovery," Levi says in his usual no-nonsense fashion before he heads to the stables.

Mikasa dresses herself in a blush-colored dress that buttons up the bust and ties at the waist. She puts on a floppy brimmed straw hat so her skin doesn't burn and heads out back to the garden.

They usually spend their mornings alone. They both need space, her to sort out her thoughts and him very likely to do the same. This is the time of day she allows herself to think about Eren.

Nowadays, she only allows herself a few moments a day to think about him, to remember him fully. Then for the rest of the day, she focuses on the here and now, the people around her as opposed to those she has lost. Compartmentalizing it like this helps her feel more at peace while still remembering the things she feels she needs to.

With remembering there's always a tinge of sadness, but it has faded to a more bittersweet feeling, a warmth that fills her instead of taking from her.

And that's because of Jacob.

Loving him felt natural, similar to the blind, intuitive devotion that she'd had for Eren.

Her feelings for Eren never fit into a neat definition – they had always been simultaneously familial and romantic. She'd never say that she'd loved him as her son all those years ago, but the connection she'd felt to him had, in hindsight, transcended that of romantic love. It makes the kisses and embraces she'd fantasized about seem almost shallow and girlish, like a completely separate thing from the devotion she'd felt towards him, the connection she'd shared with him.

Maybe Eren had always known that, known that they were more than the romantic feelings she'd had towards him.

She's spoken to Levi about this feeling before.

"I once told Erwin I'd break his legs to keep him from the expedition to Shiganshina," he'd said wistfully.

"Do you wish that you had?"

He'd smiled sadly and replied: "Every single day of my life."

She supposes that love has always been a volatile emotion for the both of them, that they experience it differently from others.

She already feels Jacob pulling away, striving for independence the way that all children do and she has to resist the urge to hold him closer, to cling to him like she has clung to life because she knows that that's not fair to him. His mother's love shouldn't be a burden.

She's filled up her basket with tomatoes and herbs. With her time up for the day Mikasa goes inside for a glass of water.

Levi has just come in from his morning chores and she nearly smiles at him. She still loves seeing him like this; his hair slightly mussed, cheeks warm with the summer sun and sleeves rolled up to his elbows. It reminds her of the past, of the summer they'd been brought together.

He looks like he's about to say something but the phone rings and he walks out of the room to go answer it.

"Mikasa," he shouts from the next room, "are you fine with Jacob spending the night?"

She sighs and walks to the next room with the phone.

"Let me talk with Sasha."

He hands the phone to her.

"Are you sure it's okay? You have a lot going on right now, I wouldn't want him to be a bother."

Sasha is currently pregnant with her fifth child and the youngest one is more of a handful than the rest of them combined.

"Psh Jacob is always welcome Mikasa, you know that, and besides, what's one more when the house is already chaos with or without him?"

Mikasa smiles a little and sighs.

"It's okay then, we can swing by with an overnight bag for him."

Sasha laughs, "Oh there's no need, he clearly had plans because he came with a set of pajamas and his toothbrush."

Mikasa rolls her eyes. "Of course he did. Well, send him back whenever you get sick of him."

"Will do!"

Childfree for the rest of the day, they decide to take the horses out for a ride together. They eat lunch deep in the forest near the lake in their usual, companionable silence, still not speaking of what to do about Hanji's notes on the experiment years ago.

She knows that to an outsider their relationship may seem odd, perhaps even distant or cold: two people brought together by an unintended pregnancy and circumstance. Perhaps there is some truth to that, but why they are still here, still together years later, is something far more than that.

He's the only person she's ever felt she can truly be herself with, the only person who not only understands everything about her but also loves and accepts her for it.

She rests her hand on his while they lay in the grass and the afternoon sun shines down on them.

The sun is setting by the time they get home.

"It's funny Jacob found those notes today of all days. It's been eight years today, since Hanji's experiment," he says.

"Is it? I'm not one for remembering dates."

She thinks back to the time when darkness had been her only companion and loneliness her curse, and how Levi's presence had jolted her awake for the first time in years, of feeling almost forced together by something unknown.

The feeling that Hanji's science had been able to explain.

She may not remember specific dates well, but she does remember events with sometimes shocking clarity.

It'd been a slushy, thawing early spring day when Hanji had come to see Jacob for the first time.

Hanji cradled him like he'd been made of glass when Mikasa passed him to her. She remembers the way Hanji had studied his tiny little face, like she would any sort of project or test-subject, trying hard to commit it to memory.

Hanji sniffled and Levi groaned when he saw her wiping away tears.

"He's just so beautiful!" she'd cried. "It's all Mikasa's doing, of course because you're so rude and freakish, I'm only certain he's yours because of this frown," she had said, her voice still thick with emotion.

"You calling me a freak is absurd."

Hanji had spent another minute or so simply staring at the baby, commenting here and there on his various characteristics. (Look at that hair! Attached earlobes, that's an interesting recessive trait! And a dimple too!)

When Jacob was sleeping, Hanji had showed them what she'd been working on. Pages and pages of research that explained that the Ackerman family was connected to the power of the titans, that early on their people had been experimented on and that their abilities were the end result of that experimentation.

Hanji had explained it with scientific language Mikasa had a hard time following, about genes and variants shared with titan shifting humans.

"That moment you and Levi both had growing up, that's the nexus for your power, your titan serum, if you will. That's what changed both of you. Because it was internal, there's no ailment to accompany it. It gave the two of you your abilities; physical strength, coordination, even better eyesight, but most importantly a heightened instinct. It's similar to what animals have, the way that certain fish know to return to where they were born to die, things that have been dulled as humanity evolved."

Mikasa still remembers the way Hanji had pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and the way she'd clenched her skirts while she listened to her.

"But we don't want anyone to know about all of this, so I'm leaving all the research with you two, to do what you will with it. I have fake stuff saying you're both completely normal for if anyone ever asks," she'd said.

Something about that had shaken her, because she knows that pure instinct is what eventually brought her and Levi together.

"What do you think we should do?"

He's blunt as blunt as always, though she suspects that he already has a plan in mind.

They haven't spoken about it for the last eight years. The notes sat in the bottom of the trunk at the foot of their bed, seeming taboo to speak of. It's strange to think about how they had been drawn to each other in such a way, that almost every meaningful relationship either of them had had was due to some sort of primal desire.

 _No better than a feral dog at my worst._

"I think we should destroy them,"he says interrupting her before the thought can go anywhere else.

She can't say she's surprised at his conclusion, but something about it gives her pause.

Maybe it's because she fought so hard for the truth all those years ago that destroying knowledge of any kind seems wrong, that Armin would be up in arms about harming such research, but she knows that that's not it, not entirely.

That research, those files are what brought them together. Their shared loneliness, their instinct to survive — it saved her, it kept her going.

Eight years and a child later a small part of her still wonders what they are without it. How different was she from that fish dumbly returning to where it was born? How in control is she? Have either of them made any real choices?

He shrugs and glances outside at the nearly set sun.

"It just seems like time, don't you think?"

He looks to her, his expression soft in a way that's for her and her alone.

It feels dangerous, almost rebellious in a way that she would've never expected.

"What about Jacob?"

"I think it's what's best for him. He's not like us, he's never going to be like us," Levi says calmly.

It's something of a mantra between the two of them, because frankly nothing terrifies either of them more than the thought of their son turning out like either of them.

Jacob is safe, he won't experience what they have. Jacob trips over his own feet, Jacob can hardly kick a ball right, Jacob is a normal child. She says these things over and over, sometimes to herself and sometimes to Levi and he does the same.

She still worries about the day he's bullied at school and it goes too far, the day he's an adult and he gets mugged and accidentally kills a man, or–

"Mikasa."

She shakes her head, snapped from her gradually spiraling thoughts in a way only he's ever been able to manage and feels a sense of resolve wash over her, because somehow she knows that this is the right decision.

 _For Jacob, so he can be normal._

She won't let the past loom over him, not her own, not his father's and not their people's.

They go upstairs wordlessly and grab all the books, Hanji's messy scrawl peeking out on loose pieces of paper and they go outside.

They drop the books into the fire pit with an unceremonious thud and she can't help but stare at them. Part of her thinks it's a shame to do this to their friend's hard work, but Mikasa knows that Hanji probably expected this outcome all along.

Levi takes a match and right before he's about to strike it, she stops him.

"Wait a moment," she says. She opens to the flyleaf where Hanji has written "Levi and Mikasa Ackerman" and tears out the page, folding it up and placing it in her pocket.

She doesn't know what sentimental part of her makes her do this, but for whatever reason she wants to keep something, keep something tangible representing the things between them.

The way it's written it sounds like they're married even though they aren't, and something about that makes her smile.

She inhales deeply, because she knows that this is somehow a significant moment, that this is yet another point that they can't go back from before she nods and breathes "okay."

The flames curl the paper slowly, consuming the words that describe their pasts, their connections, their lives, words as fragile as the first snowflakes of winter.

They sit on the ground together, his arm slung around her waist, her head on his shoulder as they watch it all burn.

The sun has set by the time Levi throws a log onto the now dimming fire of the past.

 _It's all gone. It's really gone._

She knows that it was just paper, that the feeling deep inside of her that draws her to him is still there, always will be, but there's a finality to it that feels significant. She feels a sense of relief that she didn't expect, a weight that she hadn't known she'd been carrying suddenly lifted off of her shoulders.

She looks up at him and places her hand on his cheek, her thumb running over his cheekbone.

The firelight dances on his face, shining in his eye as he looks at her. She'd tell him that she could look at him for ages but that's too flowery, too silly sounding for her to voice. Besides, she knows he knows what she feels, he feels it in her presence, in her expression, the same way she knows how he feels about her.

She kisses him softly and lets herself sink into him, losing herself to the same feelings that brought her to this point. Each pass of his mouth over hers, each touch from his hands brings her closer and closer to him, the way that they always have been, in many ways since that day eight years ago.

The smoke of their past rises up into the air as they love each other beneath the night sky. It goes deeper than those burning papers, than their time in the Survey Corps, than the generations before them and whatever shared feeling has drawn them together.

Because they're here and that's all she needs.

Lying beneath the starry night sky wrapped up in his arms, sharing breath with one another as the fire burns low she finally understands.

She has resigned herself to loving this life in spite of its cruelty. She loves it for her memories of Eren, for her memories of Armin, for the time she first heard her son laugh.

But, perhaps most of all, she loves it for the feeling she has when she is with Levi Ackerman.

And that's enough for her.


End file.
